Quotes about someone (4751 quotes, page 34)

“You have a choice: pursue your dreams or be hired by someone else to help them fulfill their dreams.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 7

Dreams , Help

“I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through. And yet even they have differing positions … I respect that there are survivors who can't, and certainly don't want to, listen to this music. But I don't accept that the fact that an orchestra playing Wagner in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem would do any harm to someone sitting in an apartment in Haifa.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

SPIEGEL Interview with Daniel Barenboim

People , Music , Imagination

“I don't ever wanna wake up, looking into someone else's eyes.
Another voice calling me baby on the other end of the phone.
A new girl putting on her makeup before dinner on Friday night.
No, I don't ever wanna know. Oh, oh.
No other shotgun rider, beside me, singin' to the radio.
Oh, oh. Oh, oh.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Shotgun Rider
Song lyrics, Sundown Heaven Town (2014)

Girl , Baby , Night

“I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything. So economic models -- how any model by definition isn't right. When someone just says, 'Oh, your model is wrong.' That's not much of an insight. What you want to know is, is wrong in important ways or wrong in ways that are less relevant? And you want to know what does the data really say about the model?”

Lars Peter Hansen (1952) American economist

Source: David Brancaccio (2013) " Nobel Prize in Economics winner Lars Peter Hansen on imperfect models http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/nobel-prize-economics-winner-lars-peter-hansen-imperfect-models" at marketplace.org.

Way

“I'll not listen to reason…Reason always means what someone else has got to say.”

Elizabeth Gaskell book Cranford

Source: Cranford (1851–3), Ch. 14

“I want a grown-up attitude to Cuba, for instance, a country and people I love. I want an end to the war immediately, and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the US to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. But most of all I want someone with the confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend", and this Obama has shown he can do.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

"Obama is the change that America has tried to hide" in The Guardian (1 April 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/01/barackobama.uselections2008

Love , War , People , Confidence

“Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Mirror Dance (1994)

Love , Life , Study

“The office of Speaker is almost as ancient as Parliament itself. It emerged in the Middle Ages when the Commons - the ordinary people - of England needed a spokesman in their dealings with the King, someone who would voice their grievances and present their petitions. This was by no means a safe or easy thing to do at that time, and potential spokesman generally had to be pressured into accepting the responsibility.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 4, The Office of Speaker of the House of Commons, p. 46

People , Age , Time

“You and you alone are the sole arbiter of the meaning in your life. The second you turn to someone and say, “What does life mean?” or, “What should my life mean?” you have slipped into a mind-set that courts inauthenticity and depression. The second you agree with someone simply because of her position or reputation, whether that someone is a guru, author, cleric, parent, politician, general, or elder, you fall from the path of personal meaning-maker.”

Eric Maisel (1947) American writer

Source: The Atheist’s Way (2009), p. 53

Life , Parent , Personality

“We like someone because, we love someone in spite of…”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Love

“HOW TO LEARN ANYTHINGAs far as I can tell these are the techniques used by bright people who want to learn something other than by taking courses in it. […]1. DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN. But you can't know this exactly, because you don't know exactly how any field is structured until you know all about it.2. READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON IT, especially what you enjoy, since that way you can read more of it and faster.3. GRAB FOR INSIGHTS. Regardless of points others are trying to make, when you recognize an insight that has meaning for you, make it your own […] Its importance is not how central it is, but how clear and interesting and memorable to you. REMEMBER IT. Then go for another.4. TIE INSIGHTS TOGETHER. Soon you will have your own string of insights in a field. […]5. CONCENTRATE ON MAGAZINES, NOT BOOKS. Magazines have far more insights per inch of text, and can be read much faster. But when a book really speaks to you, lavish attention on it.6. FIND YOUR OWN SPECIAL TOPICS, AND PURSUE THEM.7. GO TO CONVENTIONS. For some reason, conventions are a splendid concentrated way to learn things; talking to people helps. […]8. "FIND YOUR MAN." Somewhere in the world is someone who will answer your questions extraordinarily well. If you find him, dog him. […]9. KEEP IMPROVING YOUR QUESTIONS. Probably in your head there are questions that don't seem to line up with what your hearing. Don't assume that you don't understand; keep adjusting the questions till you get an answer that relates to what you wanted.10. YOUR FIELD IS BOUNDED WHERE YOU WANT IT TO BE. Just because others group and stereotype things in conventional ways does not mean they are necessarily right. Intellectual subjects are connected every which way; your field is what you think it is. […]”

Ted Nelson (1937) American information technologist, philosopher, and sociologist; coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"

Dream Machines
Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974, rev. 1987)

People , Books , World , Dogs

“In the modern world, material is only wealth if you can get rid of it. The British miner cannot eat his coal, nor clothe his children with it, nor build his house with it. If coal is to mean for the British miner food and shelter and clothing, he must get rid of it. Get rid of it, that is, to someone who has money, sell it. But how is that someone to get money? He can only get it by one means: By getting rid of his material to someone who has money, who can only get money by getting rid of his material — round the world.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Money , Children , World , Food

“History will remember me as the most powerful puncher that rambled through divisions like the Nazi divisions did France, Belgium & the lowlanders. Ducking me and running away to Dunkirk makes you a coward. Until someone stands up to my fistic tyranny I am the one and only dictator.”

Ali Raymi (1973–2015) Boxing Knockout Artist

Comment from Facebook account to FightNews (10 September 2014) http://www.fightnews.com/Boxing/ali-raymi-announces-move-to-flyweight-260235
Facebook comments

History

“The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.”

Russell Lynes (1910–1991) American art historian

Reader's Digest, December 1954

Art

“Satellite headlines read
Someone's secrets you've seen.
Eyes and ears have been
Satellite dish in my yard.
Tell me more, tell me more.
Who's the king of your Satellite Castle?”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Satellite
Remember Two Things (1993)

Secret , Reading

“From when Oasis first started I thought, "Thank Christ someone has picked up on that simple technique of saying they're the best thing on the planet and just fronting it." Liam is a part of a great ancestry of lippy, insecure bastard frontmen.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Q magazine (1998)

Christ , Parting

“Shahrukh is someone I can aways count on. Same is the case for both Karan and Salman. And Aamir, who I have immense respect for. To be honest, I'm still a bit in awe of him!”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

citation needed
Famous Quotes

“You have no idea how it feels to know that you've cut someone to the quick. I'll never do it again, never, never.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

Preofections - Irene Dunne, by Elizabth Wilson; Silver Screen (November 1936) http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/silver-screen-november-1936/.

Feeling , Idea

“Before we try to destroy someone else, we should first pass judgment on ourselves. Before finding fault with others, we must first pass judgment upon ourselves. Before we backbite others, we must first pass judgment upon our selves. Before we lie about others, we must first judge ourselves. Before we hurt the heart of another, we must first pass judgment on ourselves. Like that, we have to pass judgment on our thoughts and on all actions done by our eyes, ears, nose, hands, and mouth. The guilty ones are within our own body and mind. These are our qualities which exist in our actions. All these qualities exist within us, do they not? So we have to pass judgment on them. That is the state of Iman-Islam. That is what is called Islam. To first see the fault in yourself and then to pass judgment and correct yourself is true justice. Those who perform that justice are in the religion of truth. They are the leaders of the religion of truth. They are in the state of Iman-Islam. They are the true believers.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Benefit to All (undated)

Truth , Lie , Religion , Justice

“An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.”

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

As quoted in The Quotable Politician (2003) by William B. Whitman, p. 36

“It was really interesting watching what happened to Nick from my different perspective, being mousy in the corner and trying to help him through it all. Every time we went out, everyone wanted to talk to him, but no one listened to a word he had to say, and everyone assumed that because he didn't speak posh, he was thick. He's not. He's a very, very intelligent person. All that tabloid stuff about him, about us, it was as if it was someone else.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Take a Girl Like You Article http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/filmarticle-899239-details/Take+a+girl+like+you/article.do. thisislondon.co.uk. May 10, 2007.
Guillory speaks about former boyfriend w:Nick Moran.

Intelligence , Time , Help , Personality

“It's 2 o'clock in the morning and I just can't sleep
Outside the rain is pourin', I'm lonely as can be
Maybe 2night'll be different than the nights before
I need 2 feel someone beside me, I can't be alone no more”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Somebody's Somebody, written by Prince, Brenda Lee Eager, and Hilliard Wilson
Song lyrics, Emancipation (1996)

Feeling , Sleep , Night

“Envy was constantly with him; the Enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.”

Truman Capote book In Cold Blood

On Dick, part 3
In Cold Blood (1965)

Envy

“I confess that it isn't easy to enter on football with the name of someone who is already in football. I feel that with my own son. He already lives under the pressure of being a son of mine. For that I admire Rui Águas and Maldini, who managed to live with the weight of that pressure, and already did a lot.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

Chelsea FC, Doctorate Honoris Causa degree award (23 March 2009)

Feeling , Football

“I grew up in war-torn Iraq, and I believe that there are two sides of wars and we've only seen one side of it. We only talk about one side of it. But there's another side that I have witnessed as someone who lived in it and someone who ended up working in it.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

War

“Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in. It's change you can Xerox.”

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

Charging Barack Obama with plagiarism at Texas presidential debate, February 21, 2008 http://www.time.com/time/quotes/0,26174,1715473,00.html; see relevant quote above, two days earlier
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Change

“I think the main thing is that I very rarely recognise the actual interview in print. To me, it's like being painted by an artist. And then you see the picture, and they've painted someone else.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From Oor magazine (February 1987)
In interviews etc., About interviews

Thinking , Painting

“Never fall for someone with a body to diet for.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

Quoted in Time Out (12 December 2001).

“Then the big white whale, Clinton. What about someone who is a war criminal, a taker of bribes from foreign dictatorships, almost certainly a rapist (plausibly accused, anyway, by three believable women, of rape), executed a black man (Ricky Ray Rector) who was so mentally retarded that he was unable to plead or to understand the charges — You're against all that, right? But you're for it when it's someone who you think is a "New Democrat."”

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

"Conversations with History: A Dissenting Voice" http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Elberg/Hitchens/hitchens-con4.html, interview by Harry Kreisler (2002-04-25).
2000s, 2002

Women , War , Understanding , Thinking

“Once someone I was working with said, 'You know, Vanna, some people think about what they're having for lunch tomorrow and you're thinking hundreds of years into the future.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

The Universe - Sex in Space (2008)

People , Thinking , Future

“Someone has said that world history must from time to time be rewritten. When has there been an epoch that made this as necessary as does the present one? You provided a superb example of how it should be done. The hatred of the Romans for the victor, even when he was kindly, presumption upon outmoded privileges, the desire for a different state of affairs without having anything better in view, irrational hopes, haphazard undertakings, alliances with no prospect of benefit, and whatever else is the unhappy retinue of such times—you have described all that magnificently, proving to us that such things really happened in those days.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

As quoted by Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought (1991) from a letter referring to Sartorius' historical study of the rule of the Ostragoths in Italy

World , Hope , History , Time

“One day, thought Stone, there will be a war and when you get to the front you will last five minutes before someone puts a bullet in your back.”

Christopher Wood (writer) (1935–2015) English writer

Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 1)

War

“A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation.
A creator who creates, who is not an academician, who is not someone who studies in a school where the rules are already known, and of course being known they no longer exist, a creator then who creates is necessarily of his generation. His generation lives in its contemporary way but they only live in it. In art, in literature, in the theatre, in short in everything that does not contribute to their immediate comfort they live in the preceding generation.”

Gertrude Stein Picasso

Picasso (1938)

School , Art , Way , Literature

“I remember I stood stunned as a boy, in front of the paintings of the old [Dutch] masters in our museums, how they let speak Nature to you. If I have learned to see nature by someone, it was by our old masters. But most by Nature itself.”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Ik herinner me, dat ik als jongen in onze museums voor de schilderijen van de oude meesters verstomd stond, zoals ze de natuur tot je lieten spreken. Als ik van iemand geleerd heb de natuur te zien dan is het van onze oude meesters. Maar het meest van de natuur-zelve.
in an interview with J.H. Rössing, at the end of his life, c. 1902; as cited in Eind goed Al goed, de carriere van J.H. Weissenbruch https://www.artsalonholland.nl/grote-meesters-kunstgeschiedenis/johan-hendrik-weissenbruch-haagse-school, by Sander Kletter

Boy , Nature , Learning , Painting

“Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

Security (p. 274)
The Female Eunuch (1970)

Communication , Loneliness

“A lot of nonsense is spoken about morality. The world is full of people who have had affairs and most marriages, if you look at the statistics, break down, and does that make people evil? It's they've made bad decisions. It diminishes the situation to say someone is 'morally bankrupt' because they've had an affair.”

Paul Bettany (1971) British actor

Article http://www.paulbettany.net/articles/press.php?p=herald2

Marriage , People , World , Decision

“If someone needs the "unusual" to be moved to astonishment, that person has lost the ability to respond rightly to the wondrous, the mirandum, of being. The hunger for the sensational, posing, as it may, in "bohemian garb," is an unmistakable sign of the loss of the true power of wonder, for a bourgeois-ized humanity.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

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

Hunger , Loss , Personality

“Intellectualism is the result of over-educating someone who was not that smart to begin with.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

citation needed

Education

“A person working 45 hours per week averages 44% more income than someone working 40 hours per week. That’s 44% more income for 13% more time.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. xviii.

Time , Personality

“In Italy I'm big because they're all so sex-obsessed. In Germany I succeeded because they've been waiting for someone like Marlene Dietrich to come along ever since the war. I played on their need for a drunken, nightclubbing vamp. And I've won the gays, who are crucial because they have all the best discos, entirely because of the extraordinary legends about me.”

Amanda Lear (1939) singer, lyricist, composer, painter, television presenter, actress, model

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/24/focus.news, The bizarre career of Amanda Lear (At the court of Queen Lear), Andrew Anthony, 24 December 2000, The Observer, www.guardian.co.uk, 6 June 2010

War , Sex , Waiting

“I believe in love, it's all we got.
Love has no boundaries, no borders to cross.
Love is simple, hate breeds.
Those who think difference is the child of disease.
Father and son make love and guns,
Families together kill someone.
Without love, I believe in love.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Believe
Song lyrics, Made in England (1995)

Love , Hate , Making love , Disease

“My mom used to tell me that whatever you do, marry someone who loves you more than you love him.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Emma Harris, Chapter 19, p. 202
2000s, The Guardian (2003)

Love , Moms

“The idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic…. Julian Simon, a professor of junkmail marketing, and his kind, think technology will solve everything…. We can use up the Earth then we can just jump into spaceships and fly somewhere else…. Technology does nothing to solve problems of biodiversity or living space or arable cropland…. Fresh water and arable cropland are finite resources…. We are already far beyond what we can support sustainably…. The provincial view you get from someone living in some wealthy American East Coast city is wildly different from reality. Most of the world is tropical, hungry and poor. Visit the developing world and southern hemisphere and you get a very different view of reality.”

Paul R. Ehrlich (1932) American scientist and environmentalist

Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb

World , Idea , Support , Problem

“And then about whether or not to work from a given in nature. In my view, you [ Van Doesburg ] define this in a rather narrow sense. In the main, I do agree with you that the destruction of the natural, and it reconstruction, must be accomplished according to a spiritual image, but I believe that we should take a broad view here. What is natural does not have to be a representation of something. I'm now working on a thing that is a reconstruction of a starry sky ['Composition, Checkerboard Dark Colours', 1919] and yet I'm making it without a given from nature. Someone who says he uses a theme from nature can be right, but also someone who says he uses nothing at all.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in Mondrian's letter to Theo van Doesburg, 18 April 1919; as cited in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, pp. 125-6
1910's

Nature , Sense

“I don’t think that I want to make any wager if it means dealing with a Church that has grown so corrupt that it makes obedience and submission the price of its saving the life of someone’s child.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 10 (p. 165)

Life , Thinking

“I am not the kind of person who fights. You will not see me fighting with anyone. It's like if I like someone and the other two judges don't agree with my judgement, I may cry, but I won't walk away from the sets or anything like that.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Judges on reality shows http://www.rediff.com/movies/slide-show/slide-show-1-tv-interview-with-shreya-ghosal/20110601.htm

Fight , Personality , Cry

“The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind.”

Plutarch book Moralia

οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀγγεῖον ὁ νοῦς ἀποπληρώσεως ἀλλ' ὑπεκκαύματος μόνον ὥσπερ ὕλη δεῖται ὁρμὴν ἐμποιοῦντος εὑρετικὴν καὶ ὄρεξιν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν. ὥσπερ οὖν εἴ τις ἐκ γειτόνων πυρὸς δεόμενος, εἶτα πολὺ καὶ λαμπρὸν εὑρὼν αὐτοῦ καταμένοι διὰ τέλους θαλπόμενος, οὕτως εἴ τις ἥκων λόγου μεταλαβεῖν πρὸς ἄλλον οὐχ οἴεται δεῖν φῶς οἰκεῖον ἐξάπτειν καὶ νοῦν ἴδιον, ἀλλὰ χαίρων τῇ ἀκροάσει κάθηται θελγόμενος, οἷον ἔρευθος ἕλκει καὶ γάνωμα τὴν δόξαν ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων, τὸν δ᾽ ἐντὸς: εὐρῶτα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ ζόφον οὐκ ἐκτεθέρμαγκεν οὐδ᾽ ἐξέωκε διὰ φιλοσοφίας.
On Listening to Lectures, Plutarch, Moralia 48C (variously called De auditione Philosophorum or De Auditu or De Recta Audiendi Ratione)
Moralia, Others

Truth , Motivation , Thinking , Light

“I’ve been lucky - I’ve dealt with, and studied with, VERY successful people, and it seems to me the more successful the performer, the less they have to hide, and the less they feel it necessary to make you feel bad about yourself or what you do. That’s true in many arenas, though – the more comfortable someone is in his or her own skin, the more they have to offer, and the more comfortable YOU feel while around them – you can actually connect and share as human beings. The pressure of trying to impress one another evaporates, because a mutual respect already exists.”

Misty Lee (1976) Magician, voice actress, comedian

A Conversation With The Magical Misty Lee" https://web.archive.org/web/20080704115229/http://www.popcultureaddict.com/close/mistylee.htm (January 28, 2008)

People , Feeling , Study , Success

“… I'm a Christian, and as a Christian, I can't prove it to you, but God has definitely shown me very clearly through His word, and He has shown Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, that the Bible is the word of God. I admit that that is where I start from. I can challenge people that you can go and test that, you can make predictions based on that, you can check the prophecies in the Bible, you can check the statements in Genesis. I did a little bit of that tonight. I can't ultimately prove that to you, all I can do is to say to someone look, if the Bible really is what it claims to be, if it really is the word of God, (and that's what it claims), then, check it out, and the Bible says that if you come to God believing that He is, He will reveal Himself to you and you will know. As Christians we can say we know, and so, as far as the word of God is concerned… No, one is ever going to convince me that the word of God is not true.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Bill Nye, " Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham (video - 165:32) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&hd=1", YouTube, (February 4, 2014)
"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

God , People , Christ , Personality

“Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum. The plot. … Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield-earth-2000 of Battlefield Earth (12 May 2000)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Hostility , Way , Time , Training

“Now, if someone tries to monopolize the Web, for example pushes proprietary variations on network protocols, then that would make me unhappy.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

Interview by Kris Herbst for Internet World (June 1994) http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html

“I knew that Jack needed a lot of help, and what he really needed was somebody who could spend a prodigious amount of time with him, every night, see him, live with him, live with him the way someone in A. A. lives with a drunk. … I wasn't doing that. So when the crime occurred — because I'd just been hoping things would work out all right — when the crime occurred, I knew that I had a responsibility on that one.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

On his role in the parole of Jack Abbott, during which Abbot killed a man.
Interview for French TV (1998)

Hope , Way , Time , Help

“You must not take out your sword because if you try to kill someone, you must die for it yourself. What you must do instead is kill yourself, kill your own mind.”

Taisen Deshimaru (1914–1982) Japanese Buddhist monk

As quoted in A Galaxy Not So Far Away : Writers and Artists on Twenty-five Years of Star Wars (2002) by Glenn Kenny, p. 99

“I told you so. Seems like I'm out here a lot saying that to you people, right? I know it seems like a lot, but the truth is i said that i would beat Jeff, and i did. I told you so. I said that i would get rid of Jeff Hardy FOREVER, and i did. I told you so. And then i said i would make The Undertaker tap out to the Anaconda Vice, and you laughed! But then i did just that. And contrary to what you people believe, i didn't come out here to brag about becoming the first and ONLY man in history to make the Phenom, The Undertaker, tap out. I came out here to confront The Undertaker. I came out here to confront The Undertaker in MY ring, or my yard, if you will. I came out here to stick MY World Heavyweight Championship in his face, and look him in the eye, and say to him, I TOLD YOU SO! But, of course, he's conveniently not here right now, so instead, i think i'll address all of you people. It's come to my attention that you people think I have been preaching to you. Alright, we'll call a space a spade. The truth is, YES i have. Because you people need a good preaching to. You people need somebody you can look up to, you need a leader who isn't morally corrupt, and you need someone that's righteous, not self-righteous. And i know what your all gonna do next, your gonna do exactly what your hero, the Undertaker, did, your gonna give up! Hell, by the looks at half of you, you already have. I mean, what kind of life is it that you live? What kind of existence do you have where you wake up in the morning and you have to pop a pill to help crawl out of bed? And then, then you ravage your body with pitchers of beer, and that's supposed to somehow heal your broken self-worth. And then you just make excuses about inhaling poison into your lungs just to calm your nerves. And then, at the end of your sad, pathetic, lonely day, your in need of another pill to make you forget everything. You need a pill to help you sleep. (The crowd boos as Punk mouths "you make me sick") You are all just a legion of inebriated zombies, waiting in line at the pharmacy with your hand out, begging and pleading for that newest anti-depressant that you think is going to put an artificial smile on your face. You scratch and you claw for scapegoats for all of your inadequacies, and believe me, you have a LOT of inadequacies. And don't tell me that you self medicate yourself to forget about it all, don't tell me you don't self medicate to hide from all your inadequacies, don't tell me you don't do it. Because if you do, well then your a liar too. Your lying to yourself, your lying to yourselves right now. Your lying to the person next to you, you go home and you lie to your family, and it's insulting because right now your lying to ME. And i can see right through all of you people and your lies, because i am not a liar. I am a man who means what he says and says what he means. What i am is a prophet, i am the choice of a new generation, i am a champion that everybody can finally be proud of, i am the first and only straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in history. And if your not straight-edge like me, well, that just means i'm better than you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 18, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life , People , Truth , Lie

“I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question… it [their virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "The Monk might make sense" http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-monk-might-make-sense-20100127-mz0v.html#ixzz249o58Ykh, The Age, January 28, 2010.
2010

Question , Thinking , Daughters

“The villagers and squires now treated him with respect, largely because of his tall stature and the scar on his forehead. If he asked someone to repeat what had been said he was no longer mocked… The country was actually pleasant for a grown man.”

Sten Nadolny book The Discovery of Slowness

p, 125
The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

Country

“We have Mr. Wright's allegation that a surveillance operation was mounted against Lord Wilson of Rievaulx when he was Prime Minister in the mid-1970s…Many criticisms can be made of Lord Wilson's stewardship—I have made some in the past and I have no doubt that I may make some more in future—but the view that he, with his too persistent record of maintaining Britain's imperial commitments across the world, with his over-loyal lieutenancy to Lyndon Johnson, with his fervent royalism, and with his light ideological luggage, was a likely candidate to be a Russian or Communist agent is one that can be entertained only by someone with a mind diseased by partisanship or unhinged by living for too long in an Alice-Through-the-Looking-glass world in which falsehood becomes truth, fact becomes fiction and fantasy becomes reality. The result of the allegation has been substantially to fortify the view that I expressed in a letter to The Times 18 months ago, which is that MI5 should now be pulled totally out of its political surveillance role.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/dec/03/security-services-commission in the House of Commons (3 December 1986)
1980s

Truth , World , Disease , Reality

“Nobody at Magnum decides for the other what he should do and everyone is free to tell someone else: “Well, what about this story? I don’t like it for this and that reason — because of this picture.” It is extremely fruitful to have somebody to talk to as an equal. This give and take is a most profitable thing because we keep learning from each other. I keep learning from the younger members just as I learned from Bob [Robert] Capa and Chim [David Seymour] how to make picture stories. Cornell Capa, for instance, has a very keen journalistic sense; and as for the other photographer, each makes his own contribution. Everybody in Magnum has full freedom; there’s no doctrine, there is no school, but there is something that unites all of us very strongly — I can’t define it; it may be a certain feeling of freedom and a respect for reality.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), pp. 34-35

School , Feeling , Reality , Sense

“The so-called "don't say gay" law is premised on the misguided belief that, by not talking about gay people, they can simply make us disappear. I am here to tell Tennessee and all LGBT youth and teachers who would be affected by this law, that I am here for you. In fact, I am lending my name to the cause. Any time you need to say the word "gay", you can simply say "Takei". For example, you could safely proclaim you are a supporter of Takei marriage. If you're in a more festive mood, you can march in a Takei pride parade. Even homophobic slurs don't seem as hurtful if someone says, "That is soooo Takei."”

George Takei (1937) American actor and author

Regarding the Tennessee Senate Judiciary Committee passing state senator Stacey Campfield's bill SB49, which bans mentioning homosexuality in public schools prior to ninth grade

Marriage , People , Youth , Law

“What the country needs is a good big laugh. … If someone could get off a good joke every ten days, I think our troubles would be over.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Statement http://books.google.com/books?id=6swLAAAAYAAJ&q=%22What+the+country+needs+is+a+good+big+laugh%22+%22if+some+one+could+get+off+a+good+joke+every+ten+days+i+think+our+troubles+would+be+over%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage to Raymond Clapper http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/clapper-raymond.cfm (c. February 1931)

Thinking , Country

“Why should I read something someone made up when real events are so interesting?”

Frank Buckles (1901–2011) United States Army soldier and centenarian

On why he does not read fiction books.
Tampa Bay Online.

Reading

“LEADERSHIP A form of self-preservation exhibited by people with autodestructive imaginations in order to ensure that when it comes to the crunch it’ll be someone else’s bones which go crack and not their own.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (14) “Storm Centre”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

People , Imagination

“Today's a new day. It's your day. You shape it. Don't let it be shaped by someone else's ignorance or fear.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 148

Fear

“If you want to help me, and I know you do, believe in me. And do not help to criticize or break me, as some people do gladly, who are indifferent or hostile [towards me].... You must have faith in me. Believe me. And if you want to believe someone about me, believe an artist, someone like Mesdag or Blommers or Maris [one of Breitner's teachers, c. 1880], but not Kuyper and the likes of him.... and hear what they say and put more value on the talk 'finish better' and 'he is stubborn”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

from people who, let's be honest, actually know nothing about art. (The Hague, 1881)
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Indien U mij wilt helpen en dat weet ik, geloof dan in mij. en helpt niet mee om mij af te breken, dat lieden die of onverschillig zijn of vijandig zoo gaarne doen... ...Gij moet vertrouwen in mij hebben. mij geloven. En als Ge iemand gelooven wilt over mij. geloof dan een schilder iemand als Mesdag of Blommers of Maris, maar geen de Kuyper en consorten... ...en hoor wat ze zeggen en hecht dan nog eenige waarde aan de praatjes van: 'meer af' en: 'hij is koppig' - van lui die goed beschouwd er toch eigentlijk niets van weten. (Den Haag, 1881)
Quote from Breitner's letter to A.P. van Stolk nr. 24, 11 October 1881, (location: The RKD in The Hague); as quoted by Helewise Berger in Van Gogh and Breitner in The Hague, her Master essay in Dutch - Modern Art Faculty of Philosophy University Utrecht, February 2008]], (translation from the original Dutch, Anne Porcelijn) p. 36.
this quote dates from Breitner's period in The Hague, after his Maecenas A.P. van Stolk withdrew his financial support. In his defense, Breitner cites a number of painters from the Hague School he is in contact with and who have already built up a certain reputation.
before 1890

Hostility , People , Faith , Art

“Cause a costume can be comfortable
It can make you feel more beautiful
It can even make you look like someone else
But it's still you, so there's nothing you can do
Like a bad habit, the one you couldn't kick, there it always is
And it's nothing that no doctor's gonna fix.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

We Are Free Men
There Is No Beginning to the Story (2003)

Beauty , Feeling

“If someone were to prove to me- right this minute- that God, in all his luminescence, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior.”

Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) film director

Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)

God , Behavior , Change

“I have always got on well with Rachida, She's someone who has all sorts of qualities, an incredible energy, an important presence. She leaves no one indifferent.”

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (1973) French politician

Interview with The Daily Telegraph (2003)

Indifference

“It's frightening to think with modern medicine and all the technique available to them they can't really help you. In the old days, you know, you were better off because nowadays, they are all specialists. Everyone's becoming better and better at less and less. Eventually someone's going to be superb, at nothing.”

Kenneth Williams (1926–1988) English actor and comedian

YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdDtwc9HA7s&feature=g-vrec&context=G2e1b344RVAAAAAAAABg

Thinking , Help

“Legends abound of the truly great leapers who could touch the top of the board. Almost always the feat involves money-claims that the player could grab a dollar bill off the top of the board, or could pluck off a quarter and leave two dimes and a nickel change… "I defy anyone to say they took change off the top of the backboard," Chamberlain said. "I could. Someone would put a quarter up and I'd snatch it down. I've heard stories about Jackie Jackson doing it, but I've never seen anyone (but himself) come close." Sonny Hill, a Philadelphia leaping legend of the '60s, backs Wilt, saying, "The only man that's been to the top, that's Wilt. I asked Kareem if he ever did, and he could jump a little bit. He told me, `Sonny, no.'"”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

Dunking

Money , Change

“There is no greater way than to preach your love for the First Amendment then to take on a case from someone whose speech you abhor.”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

Love , Way

“We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?”

Diane Ackerman (1948) Author, poet, naturalist

A Natural History of Love (1994)

Love , Thinking , Heart

“Records are made to be broken. Someone else will come along and break it [the record of punts returned for touchdowns], and that's great. You're only here for a short time in your life, so just go out and have fun with it.”

Ted Ginn, Jr. (1985) American football wide receiver, kick returner

[Martin, Tim, Ginn's gamebreaking ability boosts No. 1 Ohio State, Associated Press, 2006-10-15, 2007-01-23]

Life , Time

“You bought the girls drinks and you stared at their perfect bodies and you pretended that they liked you. And they pretended that they liked you, too. When you stopped spending money, they got up and pretended that they liked someone else.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 1 (p. 4).

Money , Girl , Drink , Perfection

“'A'isha reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "When one of you dozes off while he is praying, he should go and lie down until he is no longer sleepy. If someone prays when he is drowsy, he may not know whether he is asking for forgiveness or asking for something bad for himself."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 147
Sunni Hadith

Lie , Peace , Forgiveness

“As a bio-philosopher — as someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and in a sense, we have become the process itself — through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and to anticipate the future and to choose from amongst alternatives.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Responding to a question of whether he holds his views as a philosopher or as a biologist.
The Open Mind interview (1985)

Imagination , Nature , Sense , Future

“Well what happened was I was asked to be on Seinfeld. They said: “Would you do a Seinfeld?” And I said, and I just happened to know to see a few Seinfelds and I knew these guys were really tops; they were really, really clever guys, and I liked the show. And so I said “Sure!” and I thought they would ask me to do a walk-on, the way it came: "Would you come be part of the show?" And I said “Yeah, sure I’ll do it.” You know what I mean? Then I got the script and my name was on every page because it was about my car. And I laughed; it was hysterically funny. So I was really delighted to do it. The writer came up to me and he said “Jon, would you come take a look at my car to see if you ever owned it?”, because the writer wrote it from a real experience where someone sold him the car based on the fact that it was my car. And I went down and I looked at the car and I said “No, I never had this car.””

Jon Voight (1938) American actor

So unfortunately I had to give him the bad news. But it was a funny episode.
In a Red Carpet interview at the 2006 BAFTA Emmy Awards describing his involvement in and appearance on the 1994 Seinfeld episode The Mom and Pop Store http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8o140TFyAA

Cars , Way , Guy , Parting

“So you met someone who set you back on your heels - goody, goody
You met someone and now you know how it feels - goody, goody”

Johnny Mercer (1909–1976) American lyricist, songwriter, singer and music professional

Song Goody, Goody

Feeling

“Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

As quoted in [Coon, Caroline, w:en:Caroline Coon, 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, http://homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2011-09-21, 1977, Hawthorn, London, 0801561299., 79262599, http://web.archive.org/20071026052834/homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2007-10-26]

“If someone asks you where you get your characters… and they're sure to do that… you always say, "He's a combination of a lot of people I have known." That way, if your character is a damn fool, nobody will want to identify with him… To tell the truth, I don't know how a man gets a character for a story, anymore than I know how he falls in love. I don't know if his characters spring full-blown from his head, or if he sees a man walking down the street and recognises him instantly… I doubt any writer knows for sure where his characters come from.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

Comment made to Novalyne Price. One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis, pp. 78-79
Other

Love , People , Truth , Fools

“Jarir ibn 'Abdullah reported that the Messenger of Allah said, "If someone does not show mercy to people, Allah will not show mercy to him."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 2, hadith number 277
Sunni Hadith

People

“If someone can relate my guitar solo to an exercise in a book … that's no fun at all.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in Guitar Player (November 1989).

Books , Exercises

“I knew Earl Warren very well, on a somewhat professional basis. Professional, as in I was a nine-year-old page boy and he was the Governor. We knew his children and played in the Governor's Mansion and so forth. I have a letter I've given to the Supreme Court Historical Society, in which he wrote and said, "You're going to go very far in government." I'm very proud of the fact that I knew well someone who later became the Chief Justice of the United States.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Interview for Academy of Achievement (3 June 2005).

Children , Justice , Boy

“We journalists… have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country… That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home… In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us… Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

The War You Don't See, ITV1 (UK), Tuesday 14 December 2010

Women , Men , War , Children

““Pascal’s Wager never appealed to me. It seems logically… shallow.”
“Perhaps because it posits only two choices,” said Aenea. Somewhere in the desert night, an owl made a short, sharp sound. “Spiritual resurrection and immortality or death and damnation,” she said.
“Those last two aren’t the same thing,” I said.
“No, but perhaps to someone like Blaise Pascal they were. Someone terrified of ‘the eternal silence of these infinite spaces.’”
“A spiritual agoraphobic,” I said.
Aenea laughed. The sound was so sincere and spontaneous that I could not help loving it. Her.
“Religion seems to have always offered that false duality,” she said, setting her cup of tea on a flat stone. “The silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.””

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

Love , Death , Religion , Silence

“Sometimes he had indulged in daydreams about finding someone. More often, though, he had tried to adjust to what he sincerely believed was the inevitable — that he was actually the only one left in the world. At least in as much of the world as he could ever hope to know.”

Richard Matheson book I Am Legend

Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 13

World , Hope , Sincerity

“…there is in this world no line so bad that someone won’t someday copy it.”

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

“The Profession of Poetry”, p. 165
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

World

“If someone only ever listens to, say, Nickelback, their opinion [about music taste] is valid but largely meaningless since they don't bring any depth to the discussion :)”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

Music

“Every weekend families across Britain settle down to watch the X-factor or Britain’s Got Talent. We revel in the discovery of new talent, the chance for someone to come from nowhere and suddenly make it big based simply on their raw ability and hard work. Yet (perhaps outside the realm of music and entertainment) our society is all too often the opposite of this ideal of opportunity.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Jo Cox: Opportunity must knock in a fairer society http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/jo-cox-opportunity-must-knock-in-a-fairer-society-1-6857022 (24 September 2014)

Family , Music , Chance

“I've got someone who loves me tonight.
I've got over a thousand dollars in the bank,
And I'm all right.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Room At The Top
Lyrics, Echo (1999)

Love

“We cannot be a party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.”

Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician

Twitter https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/704015546849820673 (28 February 2016)
2010s, 2016

“If I have called Cubism a new order, it is without any revolutionary ideas or any reactionary ideas... One cannot escape form one's own epoch, however revolutionary one may be. I do not think my painting has ever been revolutionary. It was not directed against any kind of painting. I have never wanted to prove that I was right and someone else wrong... If there is a touch of reaction, since life imposes that, it is minute. And then it is so difficult to judge a thing historically, separated from its environment: it is the relationship between a man and what he does that counts. That's what good and touches us.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

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

Life , Idea , Thinking , Painting

“[…], and the traffic noise that boomed in through the window was another reminder of what his spirit knew, that he was but a grain of sand in someone else's desert.”

Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic

Page 150.
Stepping Westward (1965)

“England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there…. We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space….. A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria…. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature…Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Wole Soyinka: Duncan Gardham - Mutallab: Again Soyinka Blames UK For Breeding Terrorists http://thewillnigeria.com/world/3592-Mutallab-Again-Soyinka-Blames-For-Breeding-Terrorists.html - TheWill, February 2, 2010</ref><ref>James Meikle - England is 'cesspit' breeding Islamists, says Soyinka http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/02/soyinka-england-cesspit-islamists - The Guardian, February 2, 2010

Life , Death , People , World

“I woke up from a nap the other night. Everyone is cranky when they wake up. I thought to myself: 'I have no right to be cranky. I'm so lucky.' On my way to go to a restaurant, I get out of the car and I see this person on crutches. His sign says that he has AIDS and that his immune system is low. You know, he's broke, and his family won't talk to him because they can't eat because of the hospital bills. He didn't do this. The system did it - so that when someone has a chronic disease, it sucks him dry. He could have been in that same restaurant two years ago, eating and tipping big. I felt blessed that I could drop a fifty on him.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Detour, (1993)

Disease , Family , Cars , Way

“The true Christian experience must always include a genuine encounter with God. Without this, religion is but a shadow, a reflection of reality, a cheap copy of an original once enjoyed by someone else of whom we have heard. It cannot but be a major tragedy in the life of any man to live in a church from childhood to old age and know nothing more real than some synthetic god compounded of theology and logic, but having no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no heart to love.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

citation needed

Love , Life , God , Age

“The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action.”

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

At an unveiling of a memorial to T. E. Lawrence at the Oxford High School for Boys (3 October 1936); as quoted in Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence (1989) by Jeremy M Wilson.
The 1930s

Money , World , Feeling , Home

“If they are destroying a flag that belongs to someone else, that's a prosecutable crime. If it is a flag they own, I really don't want to amend the Constitution to prosecute someone for foolishly desecrating their own property. We should condemn them and pity them instead.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

1990s, Letter to Patrick Leahy (1999)

“There is a reason why you only see those adventurous types marching off into crocodile infested waters and uncharted jungles up the Congo. Marching into somewhere like Newcastle city centre on a Saturday night is too damn wild, that’s why. I became overwhelmed with a desire to go to Sunderland. And it’s not very often you hear someone say that.”

David Baboulene (1960) UK author

Jumping Ships (2009)

Water , Night

“Deviance — in the sense I have been using it, of publicly labeled wrongdoing — is always the result of enterprise. Before any act can be viewed as deviant, and before any class of people can be labeled and treated as outsiders for committing the act, someone must have made the rule which defines the act as deviant. Rules are not made automatically. Even though a practice may be harmful in an objective sense to the group in which it occurs, the harm needs to be discovered and pointed out. People must be made to feel that something ought to be done about it. Someone must call the public's attention to these matters, supply the push necessary to get things done, and direct such energies as are aroused in the proper direction to get a rule created. Deviance is the product of enterprise in the largest sense; without the enterprise required to get rules made, the deviance which consists of breaking the rule could not exist.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), p. 162.

People , Feeling , Sense

“Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Source: The Encyclopedist’s Lair, The New York Times, November 18, 2007, 2007-11-19 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-domains-t.html?ex=1196139600&en=25f7b166ceba3519&ei=5070&emc=eta1,

People , Communication , Knowledge , Thinking

Quotes about someone page 34

Quotes about someone
page 34