Quotes about someone
page 40

“What a bad day it was, the clouds were low and cloudy, the rain no fun, and the dark as it hit the late afternoon thick like someone who stops by your place and just won't leave. The day was canceled, almost, on account of the rain spilling itself over everything.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Frigidly

“My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

The Passion (1987)

Love, Lovers, Passion

“I just sought a way to be someone I wasn't. To be loved.”

Mark Chapman (1955) American assassin

Mark Chapman http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/940986.stm

Love, Way

“Is this the visitor from the wrong side
of the mirror? Or the shape
that suddenly flitted past my window?
Is it the new moon playing tricks,
or is someone really standing there again
between the stove and the cupboard?”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Past

“Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone.
It was culture, which you didn't need the permission of someone else to take and build upon. That was the character of creativity at the birth of the last century. It was built upon a constitutional requirement that protection be for limited times, and it was originally limited. Fourteen years, if the author lived, then 28, then in 1831 it went to 42, then in 1909 it went to 56, and then magically, starting in 1962, look — no hands, the term expands.
Eleven times in the last 40 years it has been extended for existing works — not just for new works that are going to be created, but existing works. The most recent is the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

OSCON 2002

People, Birth, Time

“The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn't come from the explosion. The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror. Every London cop who stops someone from taking a picture of a public building, every TSA agent who takes away your kid's toothpaste, every NSA spook who wiretaps your email, does the terrorist's job for him. Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he might be 'al Qaeda operative'" BoingBoing (30 November 2009) http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/30/bbc-photographer-pre.html

“Organizations' problems can all be traced to someone not telling the right someone what had their attention, when it did.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

12 May 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/13822827287 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Problem

“To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book — that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

OSCON 2002
Context: Here's a simple copyright lesson: Law regulates copies. What's that mean? Well, before the Internet, think of this as a world of all possible uses of a copyrighted work. Most of them are unregulated. Talking about fair use, this is not fair use; this is unregulated use. To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book — that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else. For example, quoting a text in another text — that's a copy, but it's a still fair use. That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.
Enter the Internet. Every act is a copy, which means all of these unregulated uses disappear. Presumptively, everything you do on your machine on the network is a regulated use. And now it forces us into this tiny little category of arguing about, "What about the fair uses? What about the fair uses?" I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control?

Books, Law, Sleep, Reading

“Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.”

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

[1992Sep21.214659.22849@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

Death

“Susan [Silver] gives me a huge amount of room to be that recluse, and also the incentive to not be. It’s worth a lot to see her be excited about being around someone who’s not afraid of his shadow. It’s good for her. She digs it. But we’re becoming more alike. When she comes home to me from a day at the office, where she’s talking to people from all over the world about all sorts of important things… well, I probably haven’t answered the phone in seventy-two hours. She knows that when she comes home she’s going to get privacy, because I’m not like ‘These are my South American friends and… honey, have you ever really listened to that first Van Halen album?’ She’s the best roommate I’ve ever had. People are sort of perplexed, as to how this could possibly work in this grunge-music, super-druggy era where everybody is so emotionally screwed up. Not only is Soundgarden not OD’ing on heroin, but the singer’s wife manages the band, there’s no weird Yoko Ono trip, and she’s not trying to make us dress up like lions and unicorns.”

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

When asked if intimacy is an issue in his marriage to Soundgarden's manager Susan Silver ** Interview with Details Magazine, December 1996 https://pitchfork.com/features/article/10081-chris-cornell-searching-for-solitude/, Soundgarden Era

People, World, Music, Home

“I've found that at times that question and the dubiousness that I seem to exude has given people something — not simply gossip or whether God is going to smite them for liking our band, but actually they've found strength and become more comfortable with who they are as a person. It's pansexual, that sort of reach. It's a wonderful side effect of what we're doing, to give someone the strength to come out of the closet to their family, or simply present themselves aesthetically in a way they feel happy with, whether or not their friends are going to be allowed to like them anymore. So it's actually a really cool side effect to all the rumors.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Being asked about his orientation. SFGate, June 11, 2006 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:T0a5NuTLJPUJ:articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-11/entertainment/17297619_1_green-day-decemberunderground-miss-murder/2&hl=en&strip=1

God, Happiness, People, Family

“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.
As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been preempted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder has evolved into a storm — a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else — even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” or “You’ll pull out of it” or “We all have bad days.””

William Styron book Darkness Visible

The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), IV

People, Disease, School, Way

“Someone who cannot acknowledge himself to be as mortal as everyone else still has a long way to go before he can reach the point of encounter.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

Way

“It's basically [about] having to make a decision whether to do nothing or try to engage with it in some way, knowing that it's flawed. It's convenient to project that back on to someone personally and say they're a hypocrite. It's a lot easier to do that than actually do anything else. And yeah, that stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite. As we all are.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

On celebrities supporting efforts to curtail climate change. source http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1795948,00.html

Way, Decision, Personality

“Animals in zoos (we are told) believe that their bars protect them. We Americans have forged our own bars, built our own cage, and live in it more or less content as long as someone feeds us.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "Petting Zoo", p. 432
Nonfiction

Animals

“There are only two choices: Either no one created everything out of nothing, or Someone - and intelligent, omnipotent, eternal First Cause - created everything out of nothing. Which makes more sense?”

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

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Intelligence, Sense

“Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

Notebook entry (1946), published in Partisan Review: 50th Anniversary Edition, ed. William Philips (1985)

“NOTES: Jean Cololère, a drummer in the colonial troops at Québec, was imprisoned for duelling in 1751. In the cell next to his was Françoise Laurent, who had been sentenced to hang for stealing. Except for letters of pardon, the only way at the time for someone under sentence of death to escape hanging was, for a man, to become a hangman, or, for a woman, to marry one. Françoise persuaded Cololère to apply for the vacant (and undesirable) post of executioner, and also to marry her.
—Condensed from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume III, 1741-1770”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987), Marrying the Hangman

Death, Way, Time

“"He's been left high and dry" (when someone has missed a top rope maneuver)”

Jim Ross (1952) American professional wrestling commentator, professional wrestling referee, and restaurateur

Commentary Quotes

“Oh, it was awful, and I vowed to myself I would never, ever push myself to the edge that much again. It was really frightening. Because absolutely everything seemed to be impossible to deal with, just little things became major - noise, if someone had a radio on, or even the sound of traffic, or being in someone's company for longer than 10 minutes - I started to find it all too much.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

Regarding the run of Piaf
Show girl (2000)

“Someone says, "Don't you think that Jesus is a crutch?" Well, maybe he is, but when you're crippled, that's not too bad. Some one else say, "Don't you think you're rather closed-minded?" I say, "Yeah, but I can afford to be, I'm right."”

Mike Warnke (1946) Evangelical Christian minister

Alive (album) (1975)

Thinking

“Each time I think I've made a connection with someone… once they find out what I can do, whether it's hours or days later, everything changes. Invariably they freak. They get retroactively paranoid, wondering what else Clark Kent is hiding from them.”

Mark Waid Superman: Birthright

Clark Kent, to his mother, Martha Kent, in an email
Superman: Birthright (2003–2004)

Thinking, Change, Time

“A man being sued after a woman has more sex than intended is like Lay’s being sued after someone has more potato chips than intended. In brief, date rape can be a crime, a misunderstanding, or buyer’s remorse.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 312.

Sex

“What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later you're going to get bitten… Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes. My heart bleeds for them when I hear someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”

Rob Ford (1969–2016) Canadian politician, 64th Mayor of Toronto

Remarks on cyclist http://bicycling.com/blogs/thehub/2012/05/03/toronto-mayor-cyclists-are-a-pain-in-the-ass/?cm_mmc=Facebook-_-Bicycling-_-Content-Blog-_-toronto (3 May 2012) 2010s, 2012

People, Cars, Heart

“[I have] all respect for that neoclassicism [of Piet Mondrian ], but it would sacrifices me too much to architecture. That kind of art does indeed fit perfectly in very modern rooms of modern buildings in equally modern cities, but never again a handcart can drive in there and never again someone can speak or think of a white dog cart in the fog. I am longing for a painting that can hang in a modern environment and still have its 'personal' life.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

version in original Flemish (citaat van Roger Raveel, in het Vlaams): Al mijn respect voor dat neo-klassicisme [van Mondriaan], maar dat offert me teveel aan de architectuur. Dat werk past inderdaad gegoten in zeer moderne vertrekken van moderne gebouwen in even moderne steden maar er kan dan nooit meer een stootkar in rijden en nooit kan nog iemand spreken of denken aan een witte hondenkar in de mist. Ik verlang een schilderij die kan hangen in een moderne omgeving en die toch een ‘eigen’ leven heeft.
Quote of Raveel, in a letter to his friend Hugo Claus, from Machelen aan de Leie, after February 1951; as cited in Hugo Claus, Roger Raveel; Brieven 1947 – 1962, ed. Katrien Jacobs, Ludion; Gent Belgium, 2007 - ISBN 978-90-5544-665-0, p. 133 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1945 - 1960

Life, Dogs, Art, Thinking

“I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

The Story of My Life and Work, vol. I (1900), ch. XV: Cuban Education and the Chicago Peace Jubilee Address http://web.archive.org/20071031084035/www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.1/html/126.html

Way, Thinking, Learning, Help

“But, I was as helpless as a chess piece
when I was lifted up by someone's hand
And delivered from the corner
my enemies had got me in
But in all of my salvation
I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell
that is myself”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

“Do not become someone who regrets leaving a job or resigning from a company when with hindsight you realize you should have stayed longer and stuck it out.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.29

“But if I had someone I would do anything and never never never never let you feel alone.”

James Morrison (1984) English singer-songwriter and guitarist

Wonderful World
Song lyrics, Undiscovered (James Morrison album) (2006)

Feeling

“someone with whom I have an intimate relationship”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

“And John took me by the elbow and he led me, kind of politely, away from the group, and he said to me, "Clearly Judas -- clearly -- Jesus is clearly setting out to fulfil the prophecy. Clearly." Now, John was the sort of person who would use the word 'clearly' repeatedly in a sentence as if that relieved him of the responsibility of actually making what it was he was saying clear. You probably know someone like that.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

What Would Judas Do?

Personality

“I was a colleague of Armen's, at the Rand Corporation "think tank," during the 1950s, and hold no economist in higher regard. When I sat down at my keyboard just now it was to find out what happened to Armen's works. One Google response was someone saying that Armen should get a Nobel Prize. I concur. My own Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 1990 along with the prize for Wm. Sharpe. I see in Wikipedia that Armen "influenced" Bill, and that Armen is still alive and is 96 years old.”

Harry Markowitz (1927) American economist

On Armen Alchian http://www.amazon.com/review/R3CH9E5B3QGZ0C

Thinking

“The rules were always there. There was always one rule; don't break the golden rule, which is if someone says that they love your music, so they love you and you're amazing; you're not amazing. You're not amazing. It's not you, they don't know you, you know? It's not that way. So don't believe that. I don't believe that about myself, and I don't believe when someone likes me too much or hates me too much. I don't believe they know what they're talking about.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

" JOSHUA HOMME: “IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT’S BEEN SAID, IT’S NEVER BEEN SAID BY ME” http://www.antiquiet.com/news/2010/09/josh-homme-interview-zane-lowe/", Antiquet (August 27th, 2009)

Love, Hate, Music, Way

“"You asking me the way?" "Yes," I said, "since I can't find it myself." "Give it up! Give it up!" said he, and turned with a sudden jerk, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Variant translation: The Policeman said to me, "You want to know the way? Give up! Just give up!" And he turned away like a man that wants to be alone with his laughter.
The Complete Stories (1971)

Jerk, Way, Laughter

“I think libertarianism does appeal to most people because that's how we lead our lives until the state gets involved. We lead our lives in voluntary interactions with other folks, and we follow what libertarians call the nonaggression axiom which means you're not supposed to initiate force against someone else except, of course, in defence of your own liberty or property. So that's something that's the Golden Rule, and that's something we can all relate to.”

Glenn Jacobs (1967) American professional wrestler and actor

9:44 P.M. This quote is effectively a condensed version of Alexander S. Peak's " Libertarianism: Ideology for the Common Man http://alexpeak.com/ww/2008/003.html" (15 January 2008), which also references libertarianism's appeal to the common person, voluntary interactions in society, libertarianism's prohibition on initiatory force, and the connection between libertarianism and the Golden Rule. Interviewed on The Independents (2014)

People, Thinking

“If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Interview (1960), Quoted in Susan Sontag's introduction to Barthes: Selected Writings, “Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,” (1982)

Literature

“Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 88

Learning, Forgetting

“I believe in being with someone for ever. Even though my marriage to Chris didn't work, I still don't consider it a failed marriage — it just came to its natural end. It didn't make me feel like I never wanted to get married again. I like sharing things with somebody.”

Billie Piper (1982) English singer, dancer and actress

On her marriage to Chris Evans, and marriage generally.
Guardian interview (2008)

Marriage, Feeling, Nature

“It is dark in my favorite dream. Someone is following me. I don't know why. I'm scared. Then suddenly I lift off. Far away. How do I feel? As if I am swimming in the air. Free. Weightless. Nobody can reach me. Nobody can touch me. It's a wonderful feeling.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

Interview in Die Zeit newspaper (2001) http://www.eonline.com/news/42093/aaliyah-funeral-set-pilot-probed

Dreams, Feeling

“In a low voice Sara told them about going to the park, seeing a man, and then not paying much attention to him until suddenly he was pushing a gun into her ribs as she unlocked her front door. “He said he had to kill me or someone would kill him.””

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 239

“There’s a war criminal coming to this country…. The occupation and expansion … building of settlements, of occupied territory, this is according to the Rome Statute, which is… the setup… the statute on which the…. So why should we receive someone who continues with such things, we could have sent him right away to the international criminal court, that would have been better”

Dries van Agt (1931) Dutch politician

About Benjamin Netanyahu during a television interview. http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.740584 (September 6, 2016)

War, Country

“Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.”

Simon Schama (1945) British historian

Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) p. 320 (1991)

World, Dead

“All I am certain of right now is that I don't want to go anywhere, and that's not bad for someone who always used to run.”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

"Clapton: The Autobiography"

“In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life. (It has always struck me as strange, by the way, that Alfred Nobel did not institute a philosophy prize, or for that matter that he instituted a physics prize but not a mathematics prize, to say nothing of a music prize - music is, after all, more universal than literature, which is bound to a particular language.) The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Dagens Nyheter http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/an-exclusive-interview-with-j-m-coetzee interview with David Attwell (December 8, 2003)

Life, Music, Way, Feeling

“[about a clerk, after recounting a story he read in which someone presented a store cashier with a million dollar bill and asked for change]
She goes "I'll bet it was a counterfeit million dollar bill."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Kinda like your high school diploma, huh?
Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered (2004)

School, Change, Reading

“They were gunning the motorcycles. There were these little backfires. There was one noise like that. I thought it was a backfire. Then next I saw Connally grabbing his arms and saying "no, no, no, no, no," with his fist beating. Then Jack turned and I turned. All I remember was a blue-gray building up ahead. Then Jack turned back so neatly, his last expression was so neat… you know that wonderful expression he had when they'd ask him a question about one of the ten million pieces they have in a rocket, just before he'd answer. He looked puzzled, then he slumped forward. He was holding out his hand … I could see a piece of his skull coming off. It was flesh-colored, not white — he was holding out his hand … I can see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head. Then he slumped in my lap, his blood and his brains were in my lap … Then Clint Hill [the Secret Service man], he loved us, he made my life so easy, he was the first man in the car … We all lay down in the car … And I kept saying, Jack, Jack, Jack, and someone was yelling "he's dead, he's dead."”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him, saying "Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you, Jack."
The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Love, Life, Secret, Cars

“There are several huge monasteries—of which Khang Phi is the greatest—dedicated to the preservation of knowledge. The monks do not sort it into good and evil knowledge, nor do they make moral judgments. They take the position that no knowledge is evil until someone chooses to do evil with it.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 10, “An Abode of Ravens: Recovery” (p. 397)

Knowledge, Evil

“I often say to my assistants, "Never trust anybody," but what I mean is that you should never trust someone else to do a job exactly the way you would want it done.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 175.

Way

“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 261
Variant translations:
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
As translated by T. Bailey Saunders
Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Books, Way, Nature, Thinking

“Satriani's Law: There's at least a 30% chance that someone will print the name Satriani incorrectly”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in Luminous Flesh Giants Tour Itinerary booklet (1995).

Law, Chance

“Christ, you're dragging me out for that? I can tell you what they'll say. They'll drag out the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: kiddie porn, terrorists, pirates, and the mafia. They'll tell us that any tool for communicating that they can't tap, log, and switch off is irresponsible. They'll tell us we're stealing from ISPs. It's what they say every time someone tries this: Philly, New York, London. All around the world same song.”

Cory Doctorow Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (2005)

World, Communication, Time, Christ

“To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

The Elements of True Piety (c. 1677), The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) http://books.google.com/books?id=oFoCY3xJ8nkC&dq edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 189

Love, Happiness, Pleasure

“The act of writing the book was painful at times, but it was easier than talking to someone.”

Piper Laurie (1932) actress

About writing her memoir. Theodore P. Mahne, "Actress Piper Laurie charms audience, interviewer at Tennessee Williams Festival" (25 March 2012), Times-Picayune at nola.com (New OrleansNet) http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2012/03/actress_piper_laurie_charms_au.html

Pain, Books, Time

“An illustrator in my own mind — and this is not a truth of any kind — is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that’s what you hold on to, and that’s what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Quoted in an interview, "Sendak on Sendak," Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (2007/2008)

Love, Truth, Books, Thinking

“I read something one day: “If someone can’t actually kill animals themselves to eat meat …,” which really put me over the top. I can’t remember where I read that, but I wouldn’t. I think a lot of people live life through convenience. … I don’t think that I fully realized until I stopped eating [meat] how much it was a part of society and how much it was affecting me. … Like anything else, you’ve been indoctrinated from day one. … when you stop eating meat, you stop supporting slaughtering animals. … people need to be more responsible for everything around them, you know—animal rights.”

K-os (1972) Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer

"K-OS", interview with peta2 (20 July 2011) https://www.peta2.com/news/k-os/.

Life, People, Support, Thinking

“Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are.”

Philippa Foot (1920–2010) British philosopher

"Moral Beliefs"

Pleasure, Fear, Justice, Courage

“A patriot is someone who cares what happens in their country.”

Billy Bragg (1957) English singer-songwriter and left-wing political activist

Spoken during an interview on CBC Radio One on the 17th of November 2006.

Country

“And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed. Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

People, World, Feeling, Imagination

“When someone forgets himself, this by no means makes him altruistic; when a thinking person forgets himself, he immediately also forgets his fellowman, he loses himself and his humanity by becoming engrossed in his subject. Thus he is in a sense more contemplative than a feeling person.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

1950's, On Being a Graphic Artist', 1953

Feeling, Thinking, Sense, Personality

“The Bible was very definitely written by men, and not superior men either; far from it! This is why so much of it can be shown to be historically and scientifically dead wrong about damned-near everything back-to-front. We’re talking about people who believe snakes and donkeys can talk, who believe in incantations, blood sacrifice, ritual spells, enchanted artifacts, pyrotechnic potions, astrology, and the five elements of witchcraft. They thought that if you use a magic wand to sprinkle blood all over someone, it will cure them of leprosy. We’re talking about people who think that rabbits chew cud, and that bats are birds, and whales are fish, and that π is a round number. These folks believed that if you display striped patterns to a pregnant cow, it would bare striped calves. How could anyone say that who knows anything about genetics? Obviously the authors of this book didn’t.”

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

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, People, Books, Bird

“Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.”

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) American political philosopher

Source: (1974), Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Redistribution and Property Rights, p. 169

“I think it’s more difficult to be vegan than gay. I think people have a harder time accepting it; people feel more uncomfortable with a vegan at their dinner table than they do a lesbian. It’s confronting. It’s kind of suggesting that what someone else is doing is bad or wrong, and it hits them on a more personal level. … If somebody is setting there eating a steak watching you eat polenta, they’re thinking that you’re trying to preach to them or you’re trying to convert them in some way. Whereas with being gay, I don’t think anyone’s concerned that that’s the agenda. “Hey, Mom, you also have to be gay. I’m gay and so should you be!””

Portia de Rossi (1973) Australian-American actress

Certainly when I told her that I was vegan, it forced her to look at her habits. Interview for VegNews magazine, July/August 2011 issue. Quoted in VegetarianStar.com http://vegetarianstar.com/2011/07/07/portia-de-rossi-on-vegnews-julyaugust-2011-issue/.

People, Way, Feeling, Moms

“I have a particular interest in corporations that give themselves a cultural aura and are in other areas suspect. Philip Morris presents itself in New York as the lover of culture while it turns out that if you look behind the scenes, it is also a prime funder of Jesse Helms, someone who is very hostile to the arts.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

Hans Haacke in: Roberta Smith "A Giant artistic Gibe at Jesse Helms," in New York Times, April 20, 1990; Republished in: The New York Times Guide to the Arts of the 20th Century: 1900-1929, (2002) p. 2929
1990s

Hostility, Art, Lovers

“I can’t tell someone that their dreams are impossible.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Dreams

“The source of totalitarianism is a dogmatic attachment to the official word: the lack of laughter, of ironic detachment. An excessive commitment to Good may in itself become the greatest Evil: real Evil is any kind of fanatical dogmatism, especially exerted in the name of supreme Good… Consider only Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of the opera, when he is confronted with the following choice: if he confesses his sins, he can still achieve salvation; if he persists, he will be damned forever. From this viewpoint of the pleasure principle, the proper thing to do would be to renounce his past, but he does not, he persists in his Evil, although he knows that by persisting he will be damned forever. Paradoxically, with his final choice of Evil, he acquires the status of an ethical hero - that is, of someone who is guided by fundamental principles beyond the pleasure principle and not just by the search for pleasure or material gain.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

23
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Pleasure, Search, Laughter, Evil

“If someone insults our mother, we would rather die than tolerate it… for us, it is Bharat mata, our biological mother and gau mata.”

Sakshi Maharaj (1956) Indian politician

On the 2015 Dadri mob lynching, as quoted in " If someone insults our mother, we would rather die than tolerate it, warns BJP’s Sakshi Maharaj http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/cow-mother-country-are-alike-dont-insult-sakshi/", The Indian Express (7 October 2015)

“Because for you, quitting smoking would be like killing someone you love.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Living to Tell the Tale

Living to Tell the Tale (2002)

Love

“Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Love, World, Making love, Painting

“If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.”

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

Authors@Google, August 16, 2007, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs&feature=youtu.be&t=1h6m59s 2000s, 2007

Feeling, Waiting, Hurt

“You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)

Children, Girl, Boy, Parent

“Be sure you have someone up your sleeve who will save you when you find yourself in deep s—.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)

“Dicko: Oh my God, you can dance can't you. Hey look, fantastic song for you. You look wonderful. If you can't do bling on a disco night when can you? That was just a real eye opener for me. That was just a real, real joyous experience for me. What we've noticed, and certainly at the finals stage is there is the performance that defines someone and shows their true star potential. For me that was yours. That was terrific.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 9

God, Star, Dance, Night

“What is not proved should not be used in court,
And even less, if someone it may hurt.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

E quel che non si sa non si de' dire,
E tanto men, quando altri n'ha a patire.
Canto XXXII, stanza 102 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Hurt

“I can’t work with computers but I work with someone who can. We talk about what the subjects will be and then I get a load of images about Liverpool. We then scan them and put them on a disk and then we manipulate them on the computer. I am treating them as posters. They are prints but I want them to look like posters.”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Colin Serjent, "Blake's 08, http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve9/peter_blake.php Nerve, Autumn 2006 On producing serigraph prints to celebrate Liverpool as the 2008 European Capital of Culture. Art

“Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1953)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Way, Thinking, Waiting, Personality

“I do not believe that all of these problems can be solved just by a new law, or something that someone says, with teeth in it. For example, when we got into the Little Rock thing, it was not my province to talk about segregation or desegregation. I had the job of supporting a federal court that had issued a proper order under the Constitution, and where compliance was prevented by action that was unlawful.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Presidential news conference http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/quotes.html (26 March 1958) 1950s

Law, Support, Problem

“When I get up in the morning and have to go to work and jump off things that may be quite dangerous, the payback isn’t the bigger car, but it’s that someone somewhere will smile a lot.”

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

From interview with David Light

Smile, Cars

“I was commissioned [in 1906] to do a ceiling-painting and an altar painting for the Saxon pavilion at the third German Arts and Crafts exhibition... I varied my tulips. But when I went in before the opening I was horrified to see that the fiery red had been toned down with streaks of grey... I gave furious vent to my feelings. Suddenly there was someone at my side, seconding my vituperation. It was Erich Heckel.... joyfully we discovered our total accord in the drive towards liberation, an art which charged forwards, unimpeded by conventions. And that was how I joined Die Brücke.”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

Quote of Pechstein in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 32-33

Art, Feeling, Painting

“His great novel The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) has certainly enlarged my life – an unusual experience for a life which is well on in its eighties. Reading and rereading it has made me realize how many ways there are of being alive, how many doors there are, close to one, which someone else's touch may open.”

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896–1957) Sicilian writer and prince

E. M. Forster, Introduction to Lampedusa's Two Stories and a Memory (New York: Pantheon, 1962) p. 13.
Criticism

Life, Way, Reading

“Stephen Jay Gould is extremely bright, inventive. He thoroughly understands paleontology; he thoroughly understands evolutionary biology. He has performed an enormous service in getting people to think about punctuated equilibrium, because you see the process of stasis/sudden change, which is a puzzle. It's the cessation of change for long periods of time. Since you always have mutations, why don't things continue changing? You either have to say that the particular form is highly adapted, optimal, and exists in a stable environment, or you have to be very puzzled. Steve has been enormously important in that sense. Talking with Steve, or listening to him give a talk, is a bit like playing tennis with someone who's better than you are. It makes you play a better game than you can play. For years, Steve has wanted to find, in effect, what accounts for the order in biology, without having to appeal to selection to explain everything—that is, to the evolutionary "just-so stories." You can come up with some cockamamie account about why anything you look at was formed in evolution because it was useful for something. There is no way of checking such things. We're natural allies, because I'm trying to find sources of that natural order without appealing to selection, and yet we all know that selection is important.”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

Kauffman in: John Brockman, ed. (1995) The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, p. 64-65. ( online http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/i-Ch.2.html)

People, Way, Game, Optimism

“A philosopher is someone who says, "We know it's possible in practice; we're trying to work out if it's possible in principle!"”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

“One who fails to observe mental and physical phenomena every time they arise cannot see them as merely mental and physical phenomena. Furthermore, one does not realize their causality, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, notself, or their immediate disappearance upon arising and their continuous disappearance thereafter. Therefore, one mistakenly identifies these mental and physical phenomena with a personal entity, a person who is either born without any cause or created by a creator. One mistakes them for someone or something permanent and pleasant, everlasting, and unchanging.”

Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–1982) Burmese Buddhist philosopher

Source: Manual of Insight (1945), pp. 66-67

Time, Personality

“In 1942 when I was in New York, I was struck by the neon advertisements flashing all over Broadway. You are there, you talk to someone, and all of a sudden he turns blue. Then the colour fades - another one comes and turns him red or yellow. The colour – the colour of neon advertising is free; it exists in space. I wanted to do the same in my canvases.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from Legér and America, exhibition catalogue Fernand Léger, Buffalo 1982, p. 52
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1980's

“And every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

You Oughta Know
Jagged Little Pill (1995)

Hope, Feeling, Time

“In the really hard cases you're choosing between the disastrous and the catastrophic, and it's hard to tell someone which one is which.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Quoted by Graham Allison , in A Conversation with Henry Kissinger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPqxISYxjcI

“Like Bancroft, MacIntyre had been a man of power, and like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing.
Someone else was paying.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 16 (p. 217)

Men

“Yet, so strong is the hold which the insidious evil of Communism secures upon its disciples, that I could still say to someone at that time: "I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 25

Communication, Strong, Evil, Time

“I'm not saying I came up with anything [laughs]. It's like people thinking we would be more real if we went onstage in jeans and T-shirts. How ignorant is that, to think that because they don't wear a suit onstage that someone is giving you the real deal? People do come and see us and think, "Look at all these gimmicks."”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

Go ahead, man. Go ahead and think that.
From the article White on White from Rolling Stone Magazine
In response to a question about his relationship with Meg being false
On 'gimmicks

People, Thinking

“Don't ever think that there someone who could undermine Egypt.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi during a cultural symposium organized by MOD Department of Moral Affairs on 11 January 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w50oWry07E. 2014

Thinking

“A tiny light had been lit in a cottage on Álftanes; probably someone was going out fishing. Often there was frost and frozen snow, and the ice creaked in the night. Somewhere out in the infinite distance lay the spring, at least in God's mind, like the babies that are not yet conceived in the mother's womb.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

God, Spring, Fish, Light

“A honeymoon is such a special time in life when you just want to be alone. It is in this little bubble of emotion and joy and happiness over the wedding. To then be chased [actually, let’s be honest here, they were stalked] by someone who breaks the bubble made us very sad.”

Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland (1982) Swedish princess

royalcorrespondent.com interview http://royalcorrespondent.com/2013/07/15/we-really-are-a-team-says-princess-madeleine-in-a-new-interview/

Life, Happiness, Sadness, Wedding

“I wanted to get involved with [PETA’s anti-fur campaign] because first off, I’m an animal lover. I have a dog. And I couldn’t imagine someone just taking my dog’s fur or skinning my dog alive or killing him just to be selfish. … If you have a heart, I’m pretty sure it’ll touch you to see how these animals suffer.”

Brandon Flowers (American football) (1986) American football player

"The NFL's Brandon Flowers Says, 'Don't Be Selfish'—Be Fur-Free" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgitAeybVOw, video interview with PETA (11 December 2014).

Dogs, Imagination, Lovers, Suffering

“You should never try to be better than someone else, you should always be learning from others. But you should never cease trying to be the best you could be because that’s under your control and the other isn’t.
quoting his father”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Interview on Charlie Rose https://archive.org/details/WHUT_20100614_130000_Charlie_Rose (2000)

Quotes, Learning

“Wonderful. Not many would understand this, if they had a clue of even half of my teen and long adult life. The reality is, at age 77, it is pure joy that both children and 80 year-olds can enjoy the film together. I could be working in the White House and children could care less. But let someone say, “that dude over there was the face, or voice of Bambi,” and I am an immediate adopted grandfather to them. That is just an unmatchable joy, and a real responsibility.”

Donnie Dunagan (1934) actor and United States Marine

A Discussion With Donnie Dunagun: The Voice Of Bambi http://www.mouseinfo.com/forums/movies-television/93590-discussion-donnie-dunagun-voice-bambi.html (February 24, 2011)

Life, Children, Age, Understanding

“In retrospect, our triumphs could as easily have happened to someone else; but our defeats are uniquely our own.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“The moral relativists ask: what do you mean by should? Here's how you should act: Act in a way so that things are good for you like they would be for someone you're taking care of. But they have to be good for you in a way that's also good for your family, and they have to be good for you and your family also in a way that's good for society (and maybe even good for the broader environment if you can manage that), so it's balanced at all those levels. And it has to be good for you, your family, and society right now, AND next week, AND next month, AND a year from now, AND ten years from now. It's this harmonious balancing of multiple layers of Being simultaneously, and that's a Darwinian reality, I would say. Your brain is actually attuned to tell you when you are doing that. And the way it tells you is that it reveals that what you're doing is meaningful. That's the sign. Your nervous system is adapted to do this. It's adapted to exist on the edge between order and chaos. Chaos is where things are so complex that you can't handle it, and order is where things are so rigid that it's too restrictive. In between that, there's a place. It's a place that's meaningful. It's where you're partly stabilized, and partly curious. You're operating in a manner that increases your scope of knowledge, so you're inquiring and growing, and at the same time you're stabilizing and renewing you, your family, society, nature; now, next week, next month, and next year. When you have an intimation of meaning, then you know you're there.""Lies and deception destroy people's lives. When they start telling the truth and acting it out, things get a lot better.”

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

Concepts

People, Truth, Family, Way

“This Prime Minister must be drummed from office and we will use each and every opportunity to make that a reality…But this Prime Minister deserves to be impeached - and we, with others, will present the case that he should be required to answer…I believe that this Prime Minister now operates outside the currency of debate, beyond the pale of decency…I don't just challenge the policies of Tony Blair, I challenge his morality…This is not a question of this Prime Minister - any prime minister - making a judgement call and just being wrong. It is not a matter, as Blair would have us believe, of someone acting in good faith and making an honest mistake. This is a man who buried the intelligence that was inconvenient, manipulated the information to suit his purpose, and entered into a secret pact with the American President to go to war come what may.”

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

Speech at the SNP annual conference (24 September 2004), quoted in The Independent, ' Salmond back with threat to impeach PM http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/salmond-back-with-threat-to-impeach-pm-6160873.html' (25 September 2004).

War, Secret, Faith, Intelligence

“My beloved brothers and sisters. On the globe, several incidents have occurred that make it necessary for us to speak about them, and guide the Muslims in their regard… It's important for us to know that as Muslims, we don't understand what part of Islam these people [terrorists] are following. In fact, we don't even understand what Islam they are following, because Islam is a totally different religion from what these people are practicing… As frustrated as we might be because of what might be happening on Muslim lands, it does not give us the right to go out and hurt people who are not at all involved… If you have a problem with someone, you may report them to the authorities. And then it will handled by the courts. You will either get justice at the courts or sometimes maybe the courts may find someone that you believe is guilty, innocent. In that case, you leave it for the day of judgment, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will be judge. But you do not take it into your own hands, to say now because the court has found this person innocent, and according to me the person is guilty, "Let me harm them, let me kill them, let me hurt them, let me rob from them". That is absolutely incorrect and it is un-Islamic… Two wrongs do not make a right, remember this… If someone has murdered someone else, Subhan Allah, it does not give us the right to murder a third party altogether. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us, and may Allah grant us guidance and ease. It's important we understand this. The world is bleeding today, and people are blaming the Muslims! Because from amongst us, some are being brainwashed. Brainwashed by what? They do not understand verses of the Quran. They don't understand the Asbab al-Nuzul, or reasons of the revelation of the verses of the Quran. They don't understand how to extract rules and regulations from verses of the Quran. They read something, someone shows them something and next thing they are prepared to give up their lives. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us an understanding. We should be giving up our lives striving to earn the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through obedience, through Salah. Look at Muhammad sallā llāhu 'alay-hi wa-sallam when he went to Ta'if, look at his example. They beat him up personally, physically, he was bleeding and the angels came to him to say "If you want, we can crush these people between the mountains". What did he say? He said "I am sent as a mercy. We don't want that to happen. If they don't accept, perhaps their children will accept."”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

Patience, Sabr... And we think that the non-Muslims are our enemies – the minute we think that, automatically we will not be able to call them towards Islam. And they will get the wrong image of Islam. My brothers and sisters, Islam, it means peace, it stands for peace, it promotes peace, it teaches peace, and everything that you will achieve is peace. In this world peace, in the next peace, in your grave peace, with your children peace, in your environment peace. That is Islam. Anything that destroys that in any way is not Islam. Remember this. "Islam Condemns Terrorism - Powerful Reminder - Mufti Ismail Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6O2anxz7CM, YouTube (2015) Lectures

Children, People, Pleasure, World

“Don’t let me get grand with you; I’m not someone who was, from day one, turning himself into a philosophical academic or anything; I was, from day one, someone who was determined to survive, and to pay attention to what was going on around him, period, and when Elvis Presley came along, my heart stood still, to borrow the Larry Hart lyric. The first note I heard from him, I said, “Well, this is it, this is a sufferer like me, this is something new, this is what I want, this is who I am, in a way,” and Elvis had that gift. That’s why there are so many Elvis imitators.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

Way, Suffering, Heart

“I don’t believe in road rage; I prefer the gentle rebuke. If I don’t like the way someone is driving, I pull up alongside the other car and say, “I hope your children turn out poorly.” Only once have I lost my cool. That was the time I said to a woman, “I hope you get a blister on your cunt.’ But I said it with a smile.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)

Children, Smile, Hope, Cars

Quotes about someone page 40

Quotes about someone
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