Quotes about something
page 49

Harper Lee photo
Steve Jobs photo
Jon Stewart photo

“I've always run by the hierarchy of "If not funny, interesting. If not interesting, hot. If not hot, bizarre. If not bizarre, break something."”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Rolling Stone interview http://jon.happyjoyfun.net/tran/1990/95_0126rolling.html, January 26, 1995

Wilfred Thesiger photo
John Hall photo
Mark Ames photo
Aidan Nichols photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
Grady Booch photo
Robert Olmstead photo
Lizabeth Scott photo

“When you say ambition to me, that's when you get me started! My greatest ambition is to be the whoppingest best actress in Hollywood. You can't blame a girl for trying! I don't want to be classed as a "personality," something to stare at. I want to have my talents respected, not only by the public but by myself.”

Lizabeth Scott (1922–2015) American actress and singer

McFadden, Robert D. (February 6, 2015). " Lizabeth Scott, Film Noir Siren, Dies at 92 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/movies/lizabeth-scott-film-noir-siren-dies-at-92.html". The New York Times.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Errol Morris photo
Li Hongzhi photo

“Although Qigong has been spread for quite a long period of time, several decades already, no one knows its real implications. Therefore, I have written in the book, Zhuan Falun, everything about certain phenomena in the Qigong community, why Qigong is spread in ordinary human society, and what the ultimate goal of Qigong is. Therefore, this book is a systematic work that enables one to practice cultivation. Through reading it repeatedly, many people feel that there is something unique about the book: no matter how many times you have read this book, you always seem to feel a sense of freshness, and no matter how many times you have read it, you always attain a different understanding from the same sentence, and no matter how many times you have read it, you always feel that there is still a great deal of content in it that is yet to be found. Why is it this way, then? It is because that I have systematically compiled many things that are considered heavenly secrets within this book, such as that people are able to practice cultivation, how cultivation should be practiced, and the characteristics of this universe, etc. For a practitioner, it can enable him to complete his cultivation practice successfully. Because no one has ever done such a thing in the past, when reading this book, many people find that a lot of the contents are heavenly secrets. After races are mixed up, you will find one's child born to be an infant of mixed blood. However, there is a partition in the middle of this child's life. If it is separated, he will be physically and intellectually incomplete or a person with an incomplete body. Modern science also knows that it is getting worse one generation after another. It would be like this”

Li Hongzhi (1951) Chinese religious leader and dissident

Falun Buddha Fa Lecture in Sydney http://www.falundafa.org/book/eng/lectures/1996L.html

Cassandra Clare photo
Karel Appel photo

“[artists are people] who employ matter between birth and death. Matter is something to use, not possess.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Kent Hovind photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo

“I have just finished one painting and am already at work on the preliminary drawings for the next one. I must do something in order to get rid of such habits or I won't manage to find time for any vacation. I have had this new painting in my mind since January, and must get it down on canvas.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from his letter to Freundlich, 15 July 15, 1938; as cited in Kandinsky in Paris: 1934-1944 - exhibition catalog, published by The Solomon K. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1985, p. 27
1930 - 1944

Lisa Randall photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo

“I began to feel the desire for something more; I wanted to do something to make things better.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

On his ambitions as a youth, in an Academy of Achievement interview (28 October 2000) http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gor0int-1
1990s

Dan Quayle photo

“What we have here is clear-cut evidence that illegitimacy—something I've always said we should talk about in terms of not having it—leads to drug abuse.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

Remarks (20 May 1992), quoted in Esquire (August 1992) and Ann Beatts (23 November 1997) "ABSURDUM; Murphy Brown's Got Dan All Fired Up Again," Los Angeles Times
Attributed

Elizabeth Loftus photo
Cotton Mather photo

“Your Knowledge has Qualified You to make those Reflections on the following Relations, which few can Think, and tis not fit that all should See. How far the Platonic Notions of Demons which were, it may be, much more espoused by those primitive Christians and Scholars that we call The Fathers, than they see countenanced in the ensuing Narratives, are to be allowed by a serious man, your Scriptural Divinity, join'd with Your most Rational Philosphy, will help You to Judge at an uncommon rate. Had I on the Occasion before me handled the Doctrin of Demons, or launced forth into Speculations about magical Mysteries, I might have made some Ostentation, that I have read something and thought a little in my time; but it would neither have been Convenient for me, nor Profitable for those plain Folkes, whose Edification I have all along aimed at. I have therefore here but briefly touch't every thing with an American Pen; a Pen which your Desert likewise has further Entitled You to the utmost Expressions of Respect and Honor from. Though I have no Commission, yet I am sure I shall meet with no Crimination, if I here publickly wish You all manner of Happiness, in the Name of the great Multitudes whom you have laid under everlasting Obligations. Wherefore in the name of the many hundred Sick people, whom your charitable and skilful Hands have most freely dispens'd your no less generous than secret Medicines to; and in the name of Your whole Countrey, which hath long had cause to believe that you will succeed Your Honourable Father and Grandfather in successful Endeavours for our Welfare; I say, In their Name, I now do wish you all the Prosperity of them that love Jerusalem. And whereas it hath been sometimes observed, That the Genius of an Author is commonly Discovered in the Dedicatory Epistle, I shall be content if this Dedicatory Epistle of mine, have now discovered me to be,
(Sir) Your sincere and very humble Servant,
C. Mather.”

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) American religious minister and scientific writer

“I find it very significant that no religious traditions, Islam included, is ever in a position, I think almost by definition, to put cruelty first in the order of its priorities of the terrible things that human beings can do. That is perfectly illustrated in the story of Abraham's sacrifice with his son. Because, of course, what the story's all about is faith, the importance, and the primacy of faith. … What is the essence of faith in the story is Abraham's willingness (a) not to question God about his command to sacrifice his son, and (b) to proceed slowly, deliberately, over a period of time -- three days, I think it was -- [and] march up the mountain, prepare the sacrifice, unquestioning, resolute. [It was] the perfect, as Kierkegaard put it, "night of faith" model, exemplar of faith. And [Abraham] is, in the Muslim tradition exactly that -- an exemplar of faith. That is the importance of Abraham to Muslims. … Had he faltered, his faith would have been less, a degree or so less. He didn't falter. God immediately stops it at the absolute last moment and, of course, the act is ended. But what the story is all about is how faith in God comes first, before anything else, and then follow various virtues, of which harm to other human beings surely has to be below faith. It seemed to me that that is something that the hijackers certainly took to heart.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Mitch McConnell photo

“Apparently there’s yet a new standard now to not confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all. I think that’s something the American people simply will not tolerate.”

Mitch McConnell (1942) US Senator from Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/312710-mcconnell-we-will-not-tolerate-dems-blocking-scotus-nominee
2017

Helen Garner photo
Stella Vine photo
Courtney B. Vance photo
Alfred North Whitehead photo
John Galsworthy photo
John C. Reilly photo
William Thomson photo
Alison Lohman photo

“Every one excels in something in which another fails.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 17
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Andy Warhol photo
Carole King photo

“All you have to do is touch my hand
To show me you understand
And something happens to me.
That's some kind of wonderful.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Some Kind of Wonderful (1961), Co-written with Gerry Goffin, first recorded by The Drifters
Song lyrics, Singles

“If I am not doing something illicit, I feel absolutely naked.”

What Would Jack Do?

Dick Cheney photo

“[F]ascinating… significant movement… [P]art of the American tradition… There's something positive… when we can simultaneously swear in a new president and at the same time have a democratic process of people expressing their views. It's their right and we shouldn’t be surprised by it, or annoyed by it.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

At the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series in Sarasota https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/articles/2017/1/23/dick-cheney-sarasota (January 2017)
2010s, 2017

Giraut de Bornelh photo

“He was the best troubadour of those who lived before him or came after him, and for that reason was called the master of the troubadours, a title which is still applied to him in the opinion of those who know something about poetry and love.”

Giraut de Bornelh (1138–1220) French writer

Anonymous 13th century Provençal biographer of Guiraut de Bornelh, cited from H. J. Chaytor The Troubadours of Dante (1902) pp. 29-30; translation from The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) vol. 6. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06570b.htm
Criticism

Adrienne von Speyr photo
Clive Barker photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Roger Shepard photo
David Cameron photo
John Buchan photo

“I must get off for a bit or I'll bonnet Joggleberry or get up and propose a national monument to Guy Fawkes or something silly.”

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 1 "Beginning of the Wild-Goose Chase"

Clive Hamilton photo
John Campbell Shairp photo
Joseph Joubert photo
Chris Cornell photo
Jim Morrison photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Vincent Massey photo

“How great a quality is horse sense! Someone has defined it as that something which keeps horses from betting on men!”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address to the Annual Dinner of the Canadian Press, Toronto, April 18, 1956
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Tom Stoppard photo
Nathan Lane photo
Glen Cook photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Gregory Peck photo

“It just seems silly to me that something so right and simple has to be fought for at all.”

Gregory Peck (1916–2003) American actor

Speaking at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation awards, as quoted in "Majestic presence" in The Hindu (20 June 2003) http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/fr/2003/06/20/stories/2003062001400100.htm

Woodrow Wilson photo

“I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans, because I am by instinct a teacher and I would like to teach them something.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech to the World's Salesmanship Congress (10 July 1916)
1910s

Mary McCarthy photo

“If someone tells you he is going to make "a realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"The American Realist Playwrights", p. 296. First published in Harper's Magazine (July 1961)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

A.A. Milne photo
Lewis Black photo
Sarah Doudney photo
E. W. Howe photo

“When a man is trying to sell you something, don't imagine he is that polite all the time.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p34.

Charlie Brooker photo

“If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 5 February 2007, I hate Macs http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html
Guardian columns

Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Paul Gabriël photo

“[to mr. L. de Haes] Well, go upstairs, you know the way; are you going to take a look? At the moment you will not find many special things, but you find always something; and then we have another chat, anyway. Go ahead, I'll follow you; beware of entering because there is a large painting just in front of the door.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: [tegen L. de Haes] Ga maar naar boven, je weet den weg; kom je eens een kijkje nemen? Er is toevallig op 't oogenblik niet veel bizonders, maar je vindt toch altijd wat; en dan maken we nog een praatje nietwaar; ga je gang, ik volg je wel; pas op met het binnengaan want er staat een groot schilderij voor de deur.
Quote of Gabriël, 1893; as cited by L. de Haes, in 'P.J.C. Gabriël'; published in Elsevier's geïllustreerd maandschrift 3., April/May 1893, pp. 453-473
1880's + 1890's

Clement Attlee photo
Jimmy Wales photo

“I think that argument is completely morally bankrupt, and I think people know that when they make it. There's a very big difference between having a sincere, passionate interest in a topic and being a paid shill … Particularly for PR firms, it's something they should really very strongly avoid: ever touching an article.”

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

PRWeek (30 Jan 2007) http://www.prweek.com/us/login/required/629646 In response to suggestions Wikipedia might change policies to allow PR firms to edit the site without breaking a rule called "WP:AUTO".

Werner Erhard photo

“Something experienced is true; the same thing believed is a lie.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[39, Psychobabble: The Failure of Modern Psychology - and the Biblical Alternative, Richard L. Ganz, 1993, Crossway Books, 0891077340]
Attributed

Hermann Hesse photo

“Then came those years in which I was forced to recognize the existence of a drive within me that had to make itself small and hide from the world of light. The slowly awakening sense of my own sexuality overcame me, as it does every person, like an enemy and terrorist, as something forbidden, tempting, and sinful. What my curiosity sought, what dreams, lust and fear created — the great secret of puberty — did not fit at all into my sheltered childhood. I behaved like everyone else. I led the double life of a child who is no longer a child. My conscious self lived within the familiar and sanctioned world; it denied the new world that dawned within me. Side by side with this I lived in a world of dreams, drives and desires of a chthonic nature, across which my conscious self desperately built its fragile bridges, for the childhood world within me was falling apart. Like most parents, mine were no help with the new problems of puberty, to which no reference was ever made. All they did was take endless trouble in supporting my hopeless attempts to deny reality and to continue dwelling in a childhood world that was becoming more and more unreal. I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly.”

Source: Demian (1919), p. 135

Robert Rauschenberg photo
Tom Petty photo
Charles Robert Leslie photo

“It was impossible however not to like Turner, there was something so social and cordial in his nature and I believe him to have had a excellent heart.”

Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859) British painter (1794-1859)

Autobiographical Recollections of C. R. Leslie with Selections from his correspondence

Susan Sontag photo
Ryan C. Gordon photo
Jackie Speier photo
Bill Fagerbakke photo
Margrethe II of Denmark photo
Mark Shuttleworth photo

“A big part of willpower is having something to aspire to, something to live for.”

Mark Shuttleworth (1973) South African entrepreneur; second self-funded visitor to the International Space Station

Mark Shuttleworth Answers At Length, Slashdot, Collaborative interview, 2005-04-04, 2011-09-11, Timothy, Lord http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/04/1859255&source=wikipedia,

Bruce Perens photo
Camille Paglia photo