Quotes about something
page 53

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“An internal combustion engine is 'clearly' a system; we subscribe to this opinion because we know that the engine was designed precisely to be a system. It is, however, possible to envisage that someone (a Martian perhaps) totally devoid of engineering knowledge might at first regard the engine as a random collection of objects. If this someone is to draw the conclusion that the collection is coherent, forming a system, it will be necessary to begin by inspecting the relationships of the entities comprising the collection to each other. In declaring that a collection ought to be called a system, that is to say, we acknowledge relatedness. But everything is related to everything else. The philosopher Hegel enunciated a proposition called the Axiom of Internal Relations. This states that the relations by which terms are related are an integral part of the terms they relate. So the notion we have of any thing is enriched by the general connotation of the term which names it; and this connotation describes the relationship of the thing to other things… [There are three stages in the recognition of a system]… we acknowledge particular relationships which are obtrusive: this turns a mere collection into something that may be called an assemblage. Secondly, we detect a pattern in the set of relationships concerned: this turns an assemblage into a systematically arranged assemblage. Thirdly, we perceive a purpose served by this arrangement: and there is a system.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Decision and control: the meaning of operational research and management cybernetics, 1966, p. 242.

Mariano Rajoy photo

“Everything that has been published is false, except something, which is what the media has published.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

4 February, 2013, during a press conference with Angela Merkel, when asked about the Bárcenas Case.
As President, 2013
Source: El País https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2013/02/04/actualidad/1359990966_366780.html

Philip K. Dick photo
William Mulock photo

“A man feels impelled to do something to keep awake.”

William Mulock (1843–1944) Canadian politician, judge, academic administrator

Toronto Star, 30 November 1928, reported in [Famous Lasting Words: Great Canadian Quotations, Douglas & McIntyre, 2000, Vancouver, Columbo, John Robert, 571]

Nadine Gordimer photo
Martin Buber photo

“It is so difficult to find something interesting and new, but instead of helping me to develop fledgling ideas in their infancy, you guys immediately look for a way to attack them.”

Gersh Budker (1918–1977) Soviet physicist

as quoted by R. Z. Sagdeev in [G.I. Budker: reflections & remembrances, by Boris N. Breizman, Springer, 1993, http://books.google.com/books?id=e0bxFrmNtykC&pg=RA1-PA308, 1-56396-070-2, 308]

Stephen King photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Eli Siegel photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Kent Hovind photo
Simone Weil photo
Thomas R. Marshall photo
Agatha Christie photo
Claudia Alexander photo
Jane Espenson photo
Fritz Leiber photo

“There was always something new to be seen in the unchanging night sky.”

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 33).

Daniel Dennett photo

“Whoever said that Russia was an enigma inside a something-or-other inside something else, was dead right. I don't understand the place yet.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Pictures of Russia. p. 176.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

John Gould Fletcher photo
Gerald Durrell photo
Diora Baird photo

“I can't imagine topping this. Really. I can't imagine doing like Little House on the Prairie gone wrong or something. I really think this will be it.”

Diora Baird (1983) American actress and model

On starring in a horror movie following The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. "["set visit: Q&A with Diora Baird", 2005-11-11, horror.com, http://www.horror.com/php/index.php?m=show&opt=printable&id=1035]

Michael Moore photo

“I stopped reading the comics page a long time ago. It seems that whoever is in charge of what to put on that page is given an edict that states: “For God’s sake, try to be as bland as possible and by no means offend any one!” Thus, whenever something like Doonesbury would come along, it would be continually censored and, if lucky, eventually banished to the editorial pages. The message was clear: Keep it simple, keep it cute, and don’t be challenging, outrageous or political.
And keep it white!
It’s odd that considering all the black ink that goes into making the comics section (and color on Sundays) that you rarely see any black faces on that page. Well, maybe it’s not so odd after all, considering the makeup of most newsrooms in our country. It is even more stunning when you consider that in many of our large cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago where the white population is barely a third of the overall citizenry, the comics pages seem to be one of the last vestiges of the belief that white faces are just…well, you know…so much more happy and friendly and funny!
Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days. That’s where you can see a lot of black faces. The media loves to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.
Oops, there I go playing the race card. You see, in America these days, we aren’t supposed to talk about race. We have been told to pretend that things have gotten better, that the old days of segregation and cross burnings are long gone, and that no one needs to talk about race again because, hey, we fixed that problem.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, the “whites only” signs are down, but they have just been replaced by invisible ones that, if you are black, you see hanging in front of the home loan department of the local bank, across the entrance of the ritzy suburban or on the doors of the U. S. Senate”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

100 percent Caucasian and going strong!
Foreword to "The Boondocks Treasury: a Right to be Hostile" by Aaron McGruder, (2003).
2003

Sienna Guillory photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible. Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
John Mayer photo
John Carpenter photo
Michael Bond photo

“Paddington…has become a part of the folk-lore of childhood, not because he appears in a great or even a particularly good book, but because there is something in his personality which lodges permanently in the imagination.”

Michael Bond (1926–2017) English author, creator of Paddington the Bear

Marcus Crouch The Nesbit Tradition: The Children's Novel in England, 1945-70 (London: Ernest Benn, 1972) p. 107.
Criticism

Matthew Stover photo
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola photo

“Nor can anyone rightly choose his own doctrine from all, unless he has first made himself familiar with all of them. Moreover, there is in each school something distinctive, which it has not in common with any other.”
Nec potest ex omnibus sibi recte propriam selegisse, qui omnes prius familiariter non agnoverit. Adde quod in una quaque familia est aliquid insigne, quod non sit ei commune cum caeteris.

30. 196-197
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

George William Russell photo

“Something you see in me I wis not:
Another heart in you I guess:
A stranger's lips — but thine I kiss not,
Erring in all my tenderness.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Randy Pausch photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo

“Scientific "facts" are taught at a very early age and in the very same manner in which religious "facts" were taught only a century ago. There is no attempt to waken the critical abilities of the pupil so that he may be able to see things in perspective. At the universities the situation is even worse, for indoctrination is here carried out in a much more systematic manner. Criticism is not entirely absent. Society, for example, and its institutions, are criticised most severely and often most unfairly… But science is excepted from the criticism. In society at large the judgment of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago. The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight. Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

Georg Brandes photo

“On entering life, then, young people meet with various collective opinions, more or less narrow-minded. The more the individual has it in him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following a herd. But even if an inner voice says to him; “Become thyself! Be thyself!” he hears its appeal with despondency. Has he a self? He does not know; he is not yet aware of it. He therefore looks about for a teacher, an educator, one who will teach him, not something foreign, but how to become his own individual self.
We had in Denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his contemporaries to become individuals. But Søren Kierkegaard’s appeal was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded. For the goal was fixed. They were to become individuals, not in order to develop into free personalities, but in order by this means to become true Christians. Their freedom was only apparent; above them was suspended a “Thou shalt believe!” and a “Thou shalt obey!” Even as individuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was driven, the herd awaited them again one flock, one shepherd.
It is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again that the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an educator. He will not have a dogma set up before him, at which he is expected to arrive.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 9-10

Christopher Hitchens photo

“My quarrel with Chomsky goes back to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, where he more or less openly represented the "Serbian Socialist Party" (actually the national-socialist and expansionist dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic) as the victim. Many of us are proud of having helped organize to prevent the slaughter and deportation of Europe's oldest and largest and most tolerant Muslim minority, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. But at that time, when they were real, Chomsky wasn't apparently interested in Muslim grievances. He only became a voice for that when the Taliban and Al Qaeda needed to be represented in their turn as the victims of a "silent genocide" in Afghanistan. Let me put it like this, if a supposed scholar takes the Christian-Orthodox side when it is the aggressor, and then switches to taking the "Muslim" side when Muslims commit mass murder, I think that there is something very nasty going on. And yes, I don't think it is exaggerated to describe that nastiness as "anti-American" when the power that stops and punishes both aggressions is the United States … In some awful way, his regard for the underdog has mutated into support for mad dogs. This is not at all like watching the implosion of an obvious huckster and jerk like Michael Moore, who would have made a perfectly good Brownshirt populist. The collapse of Chomsky feels to me more like tragedy.”

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

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29): On Noam Chomsky
2000s, 2004

Pauline Kael photo
Walker Percy photo
Alice Roosevelt Longworth photo

“If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980) American writer and prominent socialite

As quoted in TIME (9 December 1966) - photograph of her with a pillow bearing the quotation http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2007-12-12-roosevelt_N.htm
Variants:
If you haven't anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
If you haven't something good to say about someone sit right here by me.

Jeff Beck photo
John Fante photo
Bill Maher photo
Veronica Roth photo

“[T]hat’s something Roth does extraordinarily well – explain the toughest parts of life. Love, loss, heartbreak, joy and faith.”

Veronica Roth (1988) American author

Book Review: Allegiant by Veronica Roth, Parkin, Lisa, Read. Breathe. Relax., October 28, 2013, November 4, 2013 http://www.readbreatherelax.com/book-review-allegiant-by-veronica-roth/,
About

“If any one a wandering Cupid see,
The little fugitive belongs to me.
And if he tell what path the rogue pursues,
My kisses shall reward him for the news:
But if he bring me back the boy I miss,
I'll give him something sweeter than a kiss.”

Moschus Ancient Greek poet

'The Stray Cupid', tr. R. Polwhele, lines 3–8; spoken by Venus.
Compare: "It fortuned, fair Venus having lost / Her little son, the winged god of love, / ....." Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, B. III, C. 6, st. 11
The Idylliums of Moschus, Idyllium I

Sri Aurobindo photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo

“Something new is wanted. A new novel, perhaps. Something the ten-percenters don't have their hooks into yet. Those soul-fuckers should all be killed.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Letter to William J. Kennedy (12 July 1967), p. 630
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)

Donald J. Trump photo

“Space. A lotta room out there, right? [Buzz Aldrin interjects: To infinity and beyond! ] This is infinity, it could be infinity, we don't really don't know, but it could be, there's gotta be something, but it could be infinity, right?”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump speaking while signing an Executive Order on the National Space Council https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/30/remarks-president-signing-executive-order-national-space-council (30 June 2017)
2010s, 2017, June

Benoît Minisini photo

“When you are doing something, you have against you every people doing the same thing, every people doing the opposite thing, and the very large majority of people doing nothing.”

Benoît Minisini (1973) French computer programmer

Quoted from the official Gambas documentation, " http://gambasdoc.org/help/doc/release?view#t1 http://gambasdoc.org/help/doc/release?view#t1"

Suze Robertson photo

“It is not so bad that my paintings have been placed in the so-called reading room [Amsterdam exhibition, probably Arti et Amicitiae at the Rokin? ]. But it will be just as you write, they will definitely have to serve for FW Jansen and others. They certainly must get the medals and have to show in a most favorable way... Are there many beautiful things exhibited or is everything rather mediocre? Is there something to see of Breitner and Bauer.”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson's brief:) Het valt me nog mee dat mijn schilderijen in de zoogenaamde leeszaal geplaatst zijn [tentoonstelling Amsterdam, waarschijnlijk nl:Arti et Amicitiae aan het Rokin?]. Maar het zal wel net zijn zoals je schrijft, ze zullen zeker dienst moeten doen voor FW Jansen en anderen. Die moeten zeker de medailles hebben en moeten op zijn gunstigst uitkomen.. ..Is er veel moois of is alles nogal middelmatig? Is er van Breitner nog iets en Bauer.
In a letter of Suze Robertson from Heeze, 11 Sept. 1904, to her husband Richard Bisschop; as cited in Suze Robertson 1855-1922 – Schilderes van het harde en zware leven, exhibition catalog, ed. Peter Thoben; Museum Kemperland, Eindhoven, 2008, p. 12
1900 - 1922

Thomas Friedman photo
Mary Kay Andrews photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Henry Kirke White photo
John Bright photo
Christopher Langton photo
Melanie Phillips photo
Philippe Kahn photo

“A watch is much more than a list of functionality and features… the bottom line is this is fashion, this is image, this something that is on our skin that we want to wear, and it’s not just another electronic gadget that becomes obsolete…. there is an emotional character to it.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

The Growth Show podcast, April 15th, 2015, regarding why some smartwatches to date have failed https://soundcloud.com/the-growth-show/apple-watch-special.

Andrew Tobias photo

“What kind of bank gives back 65 percent-often less-of what you deposit? Indeed, when you compare the services of a bank and an insurance company, common sense suggests something is out of whack.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 1, The Biggest Game In The World, p. 15.

Janet Yellen photo
Paul Erdős photo

“God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

Referencing Albert Einstein's famous remark that "God does not play dice with the universe", this is attributed to Erdős in "Mathematics : Homage to an Itinerant Master" by D. Mackenzie, in Science 275:759 (1997), but has also been stated to be a comment originating in a talk given by Carl Pomerance on the Erdős-Kac theorem, in San Diego in January 1997, a few months after Erdős's death. Confirmation of this by Pomerance is reported in a statement posted to the School of Engineering, Computer Science & Mathematics, University of Exeter http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin//kac-pomerance.txt, where he states it was a paraphrase of something he imagined Erdős and Mark Kac might have said, and presented in a slide-show, which subsequently became reported in a newspaper as a genuine quote of Erdős the next day. In his slide show he had them both reply to Einstein's assertion: "Maybe so, but something is going on with the primes."
Misattributed

Donald Barthelme photo
Albert Gleizes photo
Anton Zeilinger photo

“I think there is a need for something completely new. Something that is too different, too unexpected, to be accepted as yet.”

Anton Zeilinger (1945) Austrian quantum physicist

as quoted by [Colin Bruce, Schrödinger's rabbits: the many worlds of quantum, Joseph Henry Press, 2004, 0309090512, 213]

Italo Calvino photo
Camille Pissarro photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Your mind is your temple, keep it beautiful and free. Don't let an egg get laid in it by something you can't see.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Under the Red Sky (1990), T.V. Talking Song

Herman Melville photo
James K. Morrow photo
A. J. Muste photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Ann Coulter photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo
Sergei Prokofiev photo
Angela Davis photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“I tell you, brother, I am not good from a clergyman's point of view. I know full well that, frankly speaking, prostitutes are bad, but I feel something human in them which makes me feel not the least scruple to associate with them; I see nothing very wrong in them... And now, as in other periods of decline of civilization, the corruption of society has turned upside down all relations of good and evil, and one falls back logically on the old saying: "The first shall be last and the last shall be first."”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Sept. 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 326) p. 38
Vincent is referring to his former relation with Sien, in The Hague
1880s, 1883

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Jocelyn Bell Burnell photo
Stella Vine photo

“I will look through 200 photographs of Kate Moss and there will be just one that I connect with for some reason, maybe because of the composition or something in the eye… Something touches me and I know I have to paint it, in the way a child knows it wants something.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Eyre, Hermione. "Stars in her eyes" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20070715/ai_n19372031, The Independent on Sunday (2007-07-15), retrieved from findarticles.com
On Kate Moss.

Neal Stephenson photo
Bill Gates photo
Amy Lee photo

“Music is therapy for me. It's my outlet for every negative thing I've ever been through. It lets me turn something bad into something beautiful.”

Amy Lee (1981) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Explaining her song "Call Me When You're Sober" in "Evanescence: Amy Lee Explains the New Songs" at VH1 News (18 September 2006) http://www.vh1.com/news/articles/1540914/story.jhtml

Billy Joel photo
Pendleton Ward photo
Cormac McCarthy photo

“I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009, "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html by John Jurgensen

Anders Fogh Rasmussen photo

“Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think, it is something we know. Iraq has itself admitted that it has had mustard gas, nerve gas, anthrax, but Saddam won't disclose. He won't tell us where and how these weapons have been destroyed. We know this from the UN inspectors, so there is no doubt in my mind.”

Anders Fogh Rasmussen (1953) former Prime Minister of Denmark and NATO secretary general

In support of the Danish participation in the invasion of Iraq http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/09/nyt-protects-the-fogh-machine/ (2003)

Aron Ra photo