Quotes about someone

page 43

Interview with Bill Maher, on Real Time with Bill Maher (5 September 2003) http://www.safesearching.com/billmaher/print/t_hbo_realtime_090503.htm

Source: The Big Short (2010), Chapter Five, Accidental Capitalists, p. 108

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Charles Perrow, "Is business really changing?." Organizational Dynamics 3.1 (1974): 31-44.
1970s

New York Times, 2 October 1977

15
Writing for the Theatre (1962)

Walid Jumblatt: I Apologize to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for Comparing Snakes, Whales and Wild Beasts to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1394 (February 2007)

F 47
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Neurotics and neurosis

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2940019.stm E-government begins with you, April, 11, 2003.

On getting her role as "Paikea" in Whale Rider, as quoted in the actor profiles http://www.whaleriderthemovie.com/html/castcrew_cast.html at the official Whale Rider site http://www.whaleriderthemovie.com/.

Quoted in The Beatles — After the Break-up : In Their Own Words (1991) by David Bennahum, p. 54

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (p. 44)

Quoted in the documentary Art in a Word by Vera Baghiroli, qoob tv (22 July 2008).

George Bernard Shaw, in the Manchester Guardian, November 1, 1938.
Criticism

Notebooks (1942–1951)

October 8, 2005 weblog post http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/10/08/news.html#firstreviews

"National Brotherhood Week"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Oh, look, you got a little balloon now.
Reality...What a Concept (1979)

On exploitative media coverage of the Danielle Van Dam case, Paley Center for Media interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OymCVXtl3-4&feature=channel_page, 2002

Leningrad, 1 April 1957
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Instead of a Preface

meatrobot http://meatrobot.org.uk/post/47885354/if-you-need-to-appear-on-an-internet-list-to-know
Tweeting as @hotdogsladies

Billy Joe Shaver Bares 'Tooth,' First Album in Seven Years (2014)

Qui baise feme et plus n'i fait,
Des qu'il sont sol a sol andui,
Dont quit je qu'il remaint en lui.
Feme qui se bouche abandone
Le sorplus molt de legier done.
Source: Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, Line 3860.

Explaining the origins http://www.roger-zelazny.com/repository/absmag.html of his last book, A Night in the Lonesome October in an interview (Absolute Magnitude Autumn/Winter 1994)

World War Z

Oh No Not My Baby (1964), Co-written with Gerry Goffin
Song lyrics, Singles

Act 6, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

Polish Press Agency (July 17, 2018): Polish Scientist warns against cyborgization perils https://polandinenglish.info/38094623/polish-scientist-warns-against-cyborgization-perils.

"The secret of the web (hint: it's a virtue)," http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/the-secret-of-t.html Seth Godin's Blog (2008-08-10)

Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ (1983) as quoted in "Does Reagan Expect a Nuclear Armageddon?" by Ronnie Dugger in Washington Post Outlook (8 April 1984)

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 2, Anarchy and the Struggle for Power, p. 38

Source: Covel, Michael W., Trend Following: How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets, FT Press (2007), pages 172-173, ISBN 0-13-613718-0

Interview for DrummerGirl.com http://www.drummergirl.com/interviews/trachtenburg/trachtenburg.htm

Interview with Judy McGuire for Punk Magazine in 2001. McGuire, Judy, Joe Strummer Interview, 2001, Punk Magazine http://www.punkmagazine.com/stuff/morestuff/joe_strummer.html,

"When You Walk In The Room" (1962)

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 43

Window Dictatorship and Window Rights (1990) http://www1.kunsthauswien.com/english/fenster.htm

regarding Bill Clinton; quoted in Foleygate: The former congressman's true crime, The Phoenix, 2006-10-05, 2006-12-13 http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid24210.aspx,

I know what I have to do.
As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

In:p.36
Narcopolis

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story
Context: Slavery came to the English colonies in North America in the 17th century because the colonists found themselves in possession of a vast continent, needing only cultivation to make it the homes of millions of free, prosperous, God-fearing human beings. Those who came from Europe would be refugees from the tyranny and oppression of feudalism, divine right monarchy, and religious intolerance. But converting this vast wilderness into cultivated lands required labor. It was nearly inevitable that someone would turn to tribal Africa for some, at least, of this labor. It is paradoxical but true that a large measure of the labor that turned America into a sanctuary for freedom came from slavery. The slave trade that developed between North America and the west coast of Africa is one of the great horror stories of western civilization. It resulted also from the unlimited greed of the African chiefs who enslaved their brother Africans, and then sold them to white slave traders. They in turn sold them, for vast profits, into the new world.

O interview (2003)
Context: The whole society is obsessed.... I'm not complaining — I'm just saying, "Don't be too impressed with me. Don't try to dress like me or wear your hair like mine. Find your own style. Don't spend your savings trying to be someone else. You're not more important, smarter, or prettier because you wear a designer dress." I only wear the expensive clothes because I get them free and I'm too lazy to go out and look for my own. I, a rich girl from Mexico, came here with designer clothes. And one day when I was starving in an apartment in Los Angeles, I looked at my Chanel blouses and said, "If only I could pay the rent with one of these." … In those days, the rag I used to dry my dishes was more useful. Now many who start in this business come to me for advice and ask, "How do I get started?" And I have to say, "I honestly have no idea." I think it's a bunch of accidents that happen to you and somehow you survive them and take advantage of them and something magical happens — and you have an agent.

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 3 (as translated by RM Adams). Variants [these can seem to generalize the circumstances in ways that the translation above does not.]: The Romans, foreseeing troubles, dealt with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let them come to a head, for they knew that war is not to be avoided, but is only put off to the advantage of others.
There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.
Context: The Romans never allowed a trouble spot to remain simply to avoid going to war over it, because they knew that wars don't just go away, they are only postponed to someone else's advantage. Therefore, they made war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece, in order not to have to fight them in Italy... They never went by that saying which you constantly hear from the wiseacres of our day, that time heals all things. They trusted rather their own character and prudence — knowing perfectly well that time contains the seeds of all things, good as well as bad.

Speaking on Stossel http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/ (2009).
Context: Words are supposed to hurt. That's considered a legitimate way of fighting things out. And what did it replace in the historical scene? It replaced actual violence. Words are supposed to be free so we CAN actually fight things out, in the battleplace of ideas, so we don't end up fighting them out in civil wars. If we try to legitimately ban anything can hurt someone's feelings, everyone is reduced to silence.

2010s, Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump (2016)
Context: Someone who is paying attention can do the same thing that Trump is doing with hate, and do it with love, and become president … That’s kind of beautiful. There’s nothing more optimistic than that. … Donald Trump does, when it comes right down to it, fuck up everything … He fucks up his casinos. He fucks up his buildings.... Maybe he’ll fuck up his campaign before he fucks up the country.

Black Boy (1945)

Lesson 34, Practice Random Acts of Kindness
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff (1997)

Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)
Context: There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it.
You might feel it and just not show it.

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8
Context: These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there. But what's "potential"? That's also in someone's mind!

As quoted in Science at the Edge: Conversations with the Leading Scientific Thinkers of Today (2008), p. 170
Context: People are often unconscious of some of the mechanisms that naturally occur in them in a biased way. For example, if I do something that is beneficial to you or to others, I will use the active voice: I did this, I did that, then benefits rained down on you. But if I did something that harmed others, I unconsciously switch to a passive voice: this happened, then that happened, then unfortunately you suffered these costs. One example I always loved was a man in San Francisco who ran into a telephone pole with his car, and he described it to the police as, "the pole was approaching my car, I attempted to swerve out-of-the-way, when it struck me."
Let me give you another, the way in which group membership can entrain language-usages that are self-deceptive. You can divide people into in-groups or out-groups, or use naturally occurring in-groups and out-groups, and if someone's a member of your in-group and they do something nice, you give a general description of it – "he's a generous person". If they do something negative, you state a particular fact: "in this case he misled me", or something like that. But it's exactly the other way around for an out-group member. If an out-group member does something nice, you give a specific description of it: "she gave me directions to where I wanted to go". But if she does something negative, you say, "she's a selfish person". So these kinds of manipulations of reality are occurring largely unconsciously.

Responding to a question on whether he considered himself an atheist or an agnostic, in an interview at celebathiests.com (June 1996) http://web.archive.org/web/20061027073138/http://www.celebatheists.com/index.php?title=Tom_Lehrer
Context: No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.

As quoted in "Who knows?", The Guardian (26 October 2004)
Context: When someone just writes 'f**k, f**k, f**k', we just fix it, laugh and move on. But the difficult social issues are the borderline cases — people who do some good work, but who are also a pain in the neck.

On inspiring Robert F. Kennedy to greater concern for civil rights.
Interview in The Guardian (2007)
Context: To reach someone's soul, you have to have a social relationship. … You can't just sit down in the cold world of legal jargon and settle the nuances of racism and what it does to the social and cultural fabric. … The rich in America are so isolated that for Bobby to come into this intimate experience with its victims was a revelation. You could see in his face the anguish and consternation. It played away at his conscience and soul.

Revolution (2014)

Rescue (1945)
Context: Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died. But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.

Letter 52
Letters

CBC Documentary: How To Go Out of Your Mind: The LSD Crisis (1966)
Context: We always have urged people: Don't take LSD unless you are very well prepared, unless you are specifically prepared to go out of your mind. Don't take it unless you have someone that's very experienced with you to guide you through it. And don't take it unless you are ready to have your perspective on yourself and your life radically changed, because you're gonna be a different person, and you should be ready to face this possibility.

The Other World (1657)
Context: "I ask you only why you find the belief inconvenient. I'm quite sure you can find no reason. Since it can only be useful, why do you not let yourself be persuaded? If God exists and you don't believe in Him, you will have made a mistake and disobeyed the commandment to believe in Him. If there is no God, you won't be any better off than the rest of us."
"Oh yes I will be better off than you," he answered, "because if there is no God, the game is tied. But, on the contrary, if there is one, I can't have offended something I thought did not exist. Sin requires knowing or willing. Don't you see? Even the least wise would not take offense if some uncouth man insulted him as long as the man hadn't intended to, or had mistaken him for someone else, or wine had loosened his tongue. All the more reason then to ask: will God, who is all-imperturbable, get mad at us for not having recognized Him when He, himself, has denied us the means of knowing Him?
"But by all you believe, my little animal, if belief in God were so necessary and were of eternal importance to us, would God himself not infuse in everyone enlightenment as bright as the Sun, which hides from no one? Do we pretend that God wants to play hide-and-seek with us, like children calling 'Peekaboo, I see you!'? Does God put on a mask and then take it off? Does He disguise himself to some and reveal himself to others? That would be a God who is either silly or malicious.

2010s, Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump (2016)
Context: The problem is, I know Trump, so my optimism has been squashed like a baby bird … Everything bad I had to say about him, I said to his face. … I think he’s very good, very compelling on that show [Celebrity Apprentice] … I really like him because of his absence of filters. I really like the glimpse we get into the human heart we get when someone loses their filters … If he weren’t running for president, you’d be seeing essays from me about how much I learned from Donald Trump and how much I loved being on the show … I’m feeling so, so, so guilty, because I feel like, along with millions of other people, I played right into this. The cynicism of the Clintons, the careful, tightrope walk of all politicians, forced me, as an atheist, to get down on my knees and pray that someone would come along with some kind of authenticity … Well, someone called my bluff, goddamn it. … I’m a pure and utter peacenik. I want a president who sings the praises of people, sings the praises of peace and sings the praises of working together for a great country … Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t have laughed about waterboarding … If you told me right now I could have another eight years of Obama, I would not hesitate to grab at it. … He is unquestionably good and unquestionably smarter than I am, which is putting the bar pretty low. I want a president that is kinder, smarter and more measured than me.

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 7
Context: [A]ll men die.... A man needs many things in his life to make it bearable. A good woman. Sons and daughters. Comradeship. Warmth. Food and shelter. but above all these things, he needs to be able to know that he is a man. And what is a man? He is someone who rises when life has knocked him down. Someone who raises his fist to heaven when a storm has ruined his crop — and then plants again. And again. A man remains unbroken by the savage twists of fate. That man may never win. But when he sees himself reflected, he can be proud of what he sees. For low he may be in the scheme of things: peasant, serf, or dispossessed. But he is unconquerable. And what is death? an end to trouble. An end to strife and fear.... Bear this in mind when you decide your future.

Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 687.
Context: A wise psychiatrist once said to me, "People want to get better, but they don't want to change." But I would propose that it is only by allowing people born with horizontal identities not to change that one allows them to get better. Any of us can be a better version of himself, but none of us can be someone else.

Changing My Mind, Among Others : Lifetime Writings (1982), p. 76; also in Change Your Brain (2000), p. 72
Context: To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. The old distinction between artists and scientists must vanish. Every time we teach a child correct usage of an external symbol, we must spend as much time teaching him how to fission and reassemble external grammar to communicate the internal. The training of artists and creative performers can be a straightforward, almost mechanical process. When you teach someone how to perform creatively (ie, associate dead symbols in new combinations), you expand his potential for experiencing more widely and richly.

An Open Letter To Miles Davis (1955)
Context: I think my own way. I don't think like you and my music isn't meant just for the patting of feet and going down backs. When and if I feel gay and carefree, I write or play that way. When I feel angry I write or play that way — or when I'm happy, or depressed, even.
Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions. If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music, and I would begin to worry about my writing if such a person began to really like it. My music is alive and it's about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It's angry, yet it's real because it knows it's angry.

'Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Bulletin 3 (1969), and Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Bulletin 4, (1969)
1960s
Context: Can't you fall in love and not have a possessive relationship? I love someone and she loves me and we get married — that is all perfectly straightforward and simple, in that there is no conflict at all. (When I say we get married I might just as well say we decide to live together — don't let's get caught up in words.) Can't one have that without the other, without the tail as it were, necessarily following? Can't two people be in love and both be so intelligent and so sensitive that there is freedom and absence of a centre that makes for conflict? Conflict is not in the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love. The loss of energy is in the tail, in everything that follows — jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, doubt, the fear of losing that love, the constant demand for reassurance and security. Surely it must be possible to function in a sexual relationship with someone you love without the nightmare which usually follows. Of course it is.

"Last Chance to Think" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
2000s
Context: The powers of the placebo are so strong that it may be morally wrong to call homeopathy a lie because the moment you say it then a placebo falls to pieces and loses its power. I am a great believer in double-blind random testing, which is the basis of all drug testing. People still insist on things like holistic healing and things that have no real basis in evidence because they want it to be true—it’s as simple as that. If you’re dying of cancer or very, very ill, then you’ll cling to a straw. I feel pretty dark thoughts about the kind of people who throw straws at drowning, dying men and women, and I’m sure most of us would agree it’s a pretty lousy thing to do. Some of these people perhaps believe in the snake oil they sell or allow themselves to believe in it. That’s why James Randi is so good, because he knows what magicians know: if you do a card trick on someone, they will report that it was unbelievable, they describe the effect the magician wanted, and they miss out all the steps in between that seemed irrelevant because the magician made them irrelevant, so they didn’t notice them. People will swear that a clairvoyant mentioned the name of their aunt from nowhere, and they will be astonished if you then play a recording that shows that thirty-two names were said before the aunt’s name, none of which had any effect on them. That’s because they wanted to hear their aunt’s name; they wanted the trick to work, so they forgot all the failures in the same way as people forget all their dreams that have no relevance to their lives, but they mark when they dream of someone they haven’t met for ages that they see the next day. I would be astounded if everyone had coincidences like that—yet people say that is somehow closed-minded of me!

Robert Fulghum in True Love (1998). Versions attributed to Dr. Seuss usually run "mutual weirdness".
Misattributed

World War Z
Context: You wanna know who lost World War Z? Whales. I guess they never really had a chance, not with several million hungry boat people and half the world's navies converted to fishing fleets. [... ] So the next time someone tries to tell you about how the true losses of this war are "our innocence" or "part of our humanity"... Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales.

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy
Context: The philosophy of Bergson, which is a spiritualist restoration, essentially mystical, medieval, Quixotesque, has been called a demi-mondaine philosophy. Leave out the demi; call it mondaine, mundane. Mundane — yes, a philosophy for the world and not for philosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone. The world desires illusion (mundus vult decipi) — either the illusion antecedent to reason, which is poetry, or the illusion subsequent to reason, which is religion. And Machiavelli has said that whosoever wishes to delude will always find someone willing to be deluded. Blessed are they who are easily befooled!

The Sounds of Taqwa (2006)
Context: When it comes to "Islam" —  I look at the word as the verbal noun it is: an action word. I see Islam as something someone does, not something someone "belongs to". I believe that "religion", as the world commonly knows it today, is a divisive factor in community. When I was about 15 years old, I renounced a belief in the importance of "religion", seeking rather to find answers to life's questions. My spiritual quest has always been to bring me closer to my purpose in life, a better relationship with the force that brought me into existence, and how to relate to fellow human beings. When I was 17, I started reading scriptures from around the world and the more I read the more commonality I saw between them all. When I discovered the Qur'an at the age of 20, it seemed to be the most organic in its message. I got out of "religion" and got into life. To this day, I renounce a trust in the institutions of "religion".

"Off the Page: Martin Amis" (2003)
Context: I'd like to be remembered as someone who kept the comic novel going for another generation or so. I fear the comic novel is in retreat. A joke is by definition politically incorrect — it assumes a butt, and a certain superiority in the teller. The culture won't put up with that for much longer.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it. Which means, among other things, that we behave in response to our judgements rather than to that to which is being judged. People and things are processes. Judgements convert them into fixed states. This is one reason that judgements are often self-fulfilling. If a boy, for example, is judged as being "dumb" and a "nonreader" early in his school career, that judgement sets into motion a series of teacher behaviors that cause the judgement to become self-fulfilling. What we need to do then, if we are seriously interested in helping students to become good learners, is to suspend or delay judgements about them. One manifestation of this is the ungraded elementary school. But you can practice suspending judgement yourself tomorrow. It doesn't require any major changes in anything in the school except your own behavior.

Source: Drenai series, The Swords of Night and Day, Ch. 21
Context: "No golden age to discover now," he whispered. "No end to disease and starvation. No, bright sparkling cities reaching the clouds... All that I have lived for is gone now. I am so tired.""Then think on this, priest: You stopped the Eternal from finding greater weapons. Your actions here have led to her death. The world is free again.""Free? Of one tyrant perhaps. You think there will be no others?""No, I do not. But I know there will always be men to stand against them. You grieve because of a pure magic lost. That magic was corrupted by evil. This is how evil thrives. We find an herb that cures disease, and someone will make a poison from it. We forge iron to make a better plow, and someone will make a sharper sword. There can be no power that evil will not corrupt."

Interview by Brendan Maher http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interview.com/index.html, Start, Ireland, November 24, 2004
Context: When I started to paint, I painted children because I just felt that I wanted to take their side. What always upset me was how children are getting abused simply because they are physically weaker and not capable of defending themselves – how they get raped, enslaved and killed. I never understood why some people seemed to have fun causing pain to someone smaller.

ZNet commentary (35 November 1999) http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/1999-11/25zinn.htm
Context: Why should we accept that the "talent" of someone who writes jingles for an advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year? Who is to say that Bill Gates works harder than the dishwasher in the restaurant he frequents, or that the CEO of a hospital who makes $400,000 a year works harder than the nurse or the orderly in that hospital who makes $30,000 a year? The president of Boston University makes $300,000 a year. Does he work harder than the man who cleans the offices of the university? Talent and hard work are qualitative factors which cannot be measured quantitatively.

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 105
Context: A recruit arriving in a new unit feels lonely, homesick, and insecure. Someone has to welcome him when he arrives and make him understand that he is truly wanted. That responsibility is shared by every officer in the channel of command, beginning with the division commander. I made it a point to try to meet every new soldier joining the Division, usually assembling them in small groups for a handshake and an informal talk. A standard question for a new man was why he had volunteered for parachuting and whether he enjoyed it. On one occasion, a bright-eyed recruit startled me by replying to the latter question with a resounding "No, sir." "Why, then, if you don't like jumping did you volunteer to be a parachutist?" I asked. "Sir, I like to be with people who do like to jump," was the reply. I shook his hand vigorously and assured him that there were at least two of us of the same mind in the Division.

1920s, Truth is a Pathless Land (1929)
Context: Your prejudices, your fears, your authorities, your churches new and old – all these, I maintain, are a barrier to understanding. I cannot make myself clearer than this. I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying. “This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are. You want to have your own gods – new gods instead of the old, new religions instead of the old, new forms instead of the old – all equally valueless, all barriers, all limitations, all crutches. Instead of old spiritual distinctions you have new spiritual distinctions, instead of old worships you have new worships. You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else; and although you have been preparing for me for eighteen years, when I say all these things are unnecessary, when I say that you must put them all away and look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few. So why have an organization?

"The Hue and Cry," The Writing on the Wall (1970)
Context: Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty; it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils (“a person of inhuman and horrible cruelty or wickedness,” OED, Sense 4). Such an unnatural being is more horrible to contemplate than an Eichmann — that is, aesthetically worse — but morally an Ilse Koch was surely less culpable than Eichmann since she seems to have had no trace of human feeling and therefore was impassable to conscience.

Credo (1965)
Context: I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union.
I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.

Black Boy (1945)

Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism (2004)

2000s, Progressive magazine interview (2003)
Context: This supposed idyllic society we have is the most confused, warped, addicted society in the history of the world. We are addicted to power, we're addicted to our own image of ourselves, to violence, divorce, abortion, and sex. Any whim of the human character is deeded in us 100-fold. We're number one in child abuse, pornography, divorce, all of these categories; that's how we get paid back. You can't project something on someone else that is damaging that person and not become that yourself, it seems to me.

As quoted in Conversations with Edward Albee (1988) by Philip C. Kolin, p. 176
Context: I survive almost any onslaught with a shrug, which must appear as arrogance, but really isn't because I'm not an arrogant person. When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions — that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that its worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride. That's all. And then you go about your business, assuming you'd be the first to know if your talent has collapsed.
I don't think I've been a commercial playwright ever. By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing — which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring. I very seldom get it anyway, and then it's accidental when I do. … So I write those things that interest me.

Pretty Cool People interview (2007)
Context: I guess my favorite thing in the world is when I look at a piece of art, or read a story, or watch a movie where I walk away feeling like "Oh my god — I have to do something, I have to make something or talk to someone — things are not the same anymore" — and so I try to make work where you come away with that feeling. It's like, yeah, you're thinking about what you just saw, but even more than that — you feel able, you feel like, kind of propelled.

GQ Interview (2005)
Context: I get a very deep sense that the generation after Generation X is a very conservative generation, and I'm not sure they understand the commitment part of what I do. I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to regain that ground.... I quite often feel like I'm the youngest of the old guys, where I've got some really old-fashioned philosophies about what's credible and what's not.... Suddenly, someone like me seems like a dinosaur from a different age, but I hope it's the opposite of that. I hope I'm at the forefront of thinking and it'll all come back to that at some point.

On attending the Academy Awards ceremony, quoted in The Times (24 March 2001).
Context: It seems to me a long way to go just to sit in a non-drinking, non-smoking environment on the offchance your name is called. … It's as if you are entered into a race you don't particularly want to run in. All the hoops you have to jump through on these occasions: it's not my favourite occupation. Walking around in the spotlight having to be me is not something I'm particularly comfortable with or desire. I'd sooner pretend to be someone else.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Context: "Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissive shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." …
"You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap … ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."

"On the Radio"
Begin to Hope (2006)

"John Vanderslice interviews St. Vincent (on the road)" in Brooklyn Vegan (24 April 2007) http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2007/04/john_vanderslic_5.html
Context: The drug issue is hard to separate from a class issue, an education issue, a wonky foreign policy issue, and a race issue. What I do know is, be it caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, or adrenaline, let's face it: people like to get high. From Starbucks to Budweiser to your own brain, everybody's a pusher these days. If I could substitute another drug to be consumed in the country as much as alcohol is, it would be helium from children's birthday party balloons. Try not laughing when someone sounds like a chipmunk!

Cory Doctorow on the Open Rights Group (Time: 3:25) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Cory_Doctorow_on_the_Open_Rights_Group.webm
Context: As someone once said, "Just because you're not interested in politics does not mean that politics won't be interested in you." And staying away from politics either because you think tech will make laws irrelevant or because there's no good way to influence laws just opens the field for people who don't cherish either of those illusions to make things very bad indeed.

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: Liberals placed an unreasonable amount of faith in large institutions: unions, foundations, big government, large corporations, and universities. These institutions are based on principles that are antithetical to democracy. They are not democratic, they are hierarchical: Someone is at the top and everybody else is at the bottom. Their policies are not made democratically, they are made at the top. These institutions are also not egalitarian. They operate by administrative discretion and authority, not the rule of law: There is no legislature, no group lawmaking body.
The individual in the large organization does not have the kind of constitutional rights that an individual in the society at large has. There are no protections of autonomy and free speech. Employees can be fired for many reasons. We need to constitutionalize large organizations to protect the people within them, to ensure that they can be politically outspoken.

Give War a Chance (1992)

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mr-death-the-rise-and-fall-of-fred-a-leuchter-jr-2000 of Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (4 February 2000)
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?

"I Agree With Me" (July/August 2004)

On her album Lighthouse & The Impossible Love (2013), as quoted at Michelle Roche Media Relations http://michelleroche.com/artists/greta-gaines/
Context: When I was younger I was always looking for someone’s approval. Then I had kids and what I needed from music totally changed. Motherhood just kind of sliced away all self-defeating behavior. The lesson I learned from the experience of releasing Whiskey Thoughts was that if I make another album, it has to be for me. It has to be much more personal and honest, unique and raw, and that is what I hope that we have done here. After 20 years playing and touring, 5 studio albums and one live album I finally feel that I have found my sound. Like it or leave it the sound on this album is mine and mine alone.

Love is not a feeling ~ The Article (1995)
Context: Feelings are constantly changing. None is dependable for long. You can love someone intensely today, and tomorrow or next month not feel a thing. Except perhaps for the feeling of doubt or depression that what was so beautiful could change so quickly.

The Damned Mob of Scribbling Women http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/06/the-damned-mob-of-scribbling-women/239882/ (Jun 3, 2011) The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com
Context: I'm looking to avoid a subtly demeaning subtext which holds that reading, say, is something you should do--like flossing or taxes or laundry. I don't want to speak for women writers, but I recoil at the idea of someone reading my book because they really should read a black author or two. I don't want to be an icebreaker at your corporation's Kwanzaa gathering.

As quoted in "The Vindication of Edwin Land" in Forbes magazine, Vol. 139 (4 May 1987) p. 83; this was later humorously altered:
Context: My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.