Quotes about something
page 69

“One thing is clear, the president of North Vietnam is not a fanatic. He is a very strong and determined man, but capable of listening, something that is very rare in a person of his position.”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

On Ho Chi Minh. as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 225

Strong, Personality

“Interaction is the mode of life of living organisms. Each must feed on its environment, ingesting chemicals or other organisms. This is something more than "interaction", it is activity directed towards the environment. Since the organism must be selective in what it ingests, it needs to discriminate among the entities in its environment. From very primitive forms of discrimination, the sensory mechanisms of organisms have evolved into the senses of man, interpreted by an internal cognitive apparatus, memories of past experiences, and an ability to take rational decisions. By "rational" I mean activity that achieves intended results because it is based on a reliable understanding of the nature of the environment. In interacting with each other to carry out tasks jointly, men have further developed language, leading to a shared understanding of the environment. This shared understanding is knowledge.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Brian Vickery (2009) " The development of knowledge http://web.archive.org/web/20100125043520/http://www.lucis.me.uk/devtknow.htm" on lucis.me.uk, 2009.

Life, Men, Understanding, Nature

“I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape.”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

In defense of Roman Polansky, as quoted in "Roman Polanski: backlash as Whoopi Goldberg says director didn't commit 'rape-rape'" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/roman-polanski/6245219/Roman-Polanski-backlash-as-Whoopi-Goldberg-says-director-didnt-commit-rape-rape.html, The Telegraph, Nick Allen, 30 Sep, 2009.

Thinking

“Singing is something I’ve always wanted to do but I just want to be my own person, not to copy anyone else. I’d just like to be really famous.”

Taylor Horn (1992) American musician and actor

On becoming her own person as a professional musician. Malvern Gaz http://www.webcitation.org/query?id=1256525759902277&url=www.geocities.com/thecoolchip03/malverngaz.htm article, unidentified issue

Singing, Personality

“I am not sure what is meant by those who say that the Party should return to something called "One Nation Conservatism". As far as I can tell by their views on European federalism, such people's creed would be better described as "No Nation Conservatism".”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture (11 January 1996) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108353 Post-Prime Ministerial

People

“A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Anonymity: An Enquiry"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“The voice of Nature loudly cries,
And many a message from the skies,
That something in us never dies.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

New Year's Day, st. 3 (1790)

Nature

“Black Americans make up 10 or 11% of the population, but they account now for something of 40 to 45% of all the abortions. This is a privileged position that I'm not sure anyone in their right mind would aspire to.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Renew America rally in Orem, Utah, March 8, 2000. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_03_08utah.htm. 2000

“If I were to persuade just one person to stop fighting for something they were convinced was worthwhile, I would end up persuading myself, and my whole life would be diminished.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Life, Fight, Personality

“Anytime I feel something is wrong I'm gonna say something. Baseball has changed in many ways since I first came to the big leagues. Ballplayers feel they can speak up much more now than they did then. I spoke up even then. […] I didn't like some of the things the white players said to Roberts so I said some things to them that they didn't like.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Sports Parade" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=OkAaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mSQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6377%2C3858585 by Milton Richman, in The Hendersonville Times-News (Wednesday, April 21, 1971), p. 9 Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Way, Feeling, Change

“Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally-failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.”

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

"The Bush League" (9 September 2003)
2000s

Time, Country

“Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself—like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.”

Jean Kerr (1922–2003) Irish-American author and playwright

"How to Talk to a Man"
The Snake Has All the Lines (1960)

Women

“Most Americans don't live their lives solely as Democrats or Republicans or conservatives or liberals. Most Americans live their lives that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often it’s something they do not want to do, but they do it. Impossible things get done every day that are only made possible by the little, reasonable compromises.”

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

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear closing speech (2010)

“We offer to protect their savings in a job here. If you earn $100,000 a year there, you also spend $80,000 and save $15,000-$20,000. We say, if you work for us in India, we will ensure you save $15,000 dollars a year and are part of something exciting without a loss to you.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on retail and SEZ plans

Loss, Parting

“I certainly owe a lot of awesomeness to blogs, to people who have been blogging about a show, or blogging about a single, or blogging about something. It's just amazing to me that it seems to be a nice equalizer. People don't necessarily need the clout of a big "record company machine" to put their face on a billboard. It seems more organic and honest in a lot of ways, for fans of music to be critics I suppose.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

QRO Magazine interview (2007)

People, Music, Way

“It’s very uncomfortable to hear them used when I don’t agree with what’s being said. But I recognize that those songs have entered into a bigger life, a life all their own. They belong to the audience. How they’re used isn’t always something I can control.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Commenting on his music being used in political campaigns
Interview with Warren Zanes (2008)

Life

“I try to deal with things that maybe other people haven't thought about, emptiness, making a painting that isn't a painting. For years people have been concerned with what goes on inside the frame. Well maybe there is something going on outside the frame that could be considered an artistic idea.”

Robert Barry (1936) American artist

Robert Barry (1968), cited in: Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. New York, Praeger, 1973, p. 40. p. xii

People, Idea, Painting

“If I could tell you something, I would tell you it all”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Cracks in the Photograph
29 (2005)

“I'm a sensitive man. When I had my first casualties as a lieutenant, I had a hard time controlling my emotions, but I had a strong sergeant with me who kept me from doing something stupid. I've been around some real tough guys, and I promise you on my honor: The strongest guys I've known in life would pick up a wounded baby kitty on the side of the road. Yet you wouldn't want to go against them in combat. That is not inconsistent. It is part of the same ethos.”

Donnie Dunagan (1934) actor and United States Marine

Marine reflects on being the voice of Bambi http://www.chron.com/entertainment/movies/article/Marine-reflects-on-being-the-voice-of-Bambi-1924410.php (March 7, 2005)

Life, Stupidity, Guy, Strong

“It's unbelievable that Phil had to wait so long to get in to the Hall of Fame. Maris's home run record in 1961 has become something of a curse. He wasn't just a home run hitter, he could do everything—hit in the clutch, field, throw and run.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

On the two players deemed by Berra the most underrated of his era; as quoted in The Greatest Team of All Time: As Selected by Baseball Immortals from Ty Cobb to Willie Mays, p. 13.

Home, Waiting

“We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he’s doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won’t, can’t, or doesn’t dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e. g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can’t learn, or be intelligent about, what he’s not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Another large part of stupidity is stubbornness, unconsciously saying, “I won’t. You can’t make me.”
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 71-72.

Pain, Stupidity, Fear, Feeling

“Whoever innovates something in this matter of ours that is not part of it, will have it rejected.”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Hadith 5 Sunan Ibn Majah

Parting

“The truly radical work of art is the one that offers you something to hold on to in the midst of the flux of possibility.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

Art

“To be patient means to suffer something that hinders or hurts us, and still retain our self-composure. *How many difficulties, with their consequent unpleasantness and discord, could be smoothed over and almost entirely eliminated by patience. Patience always elevates and strengthens our character. We need it not only with others but also with ourselves.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Suffering, Hurt, Patience

“Have we clothed our faith with the forms of our American culture to the point that our Christianity has morphed into something entirely different - a folk religion altogether consumerist in spirit and content?”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

Faith, Religion, Clothes

“Only damaged people want good things to happen to them through visualization. They want something for nothing.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

People

“Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 2, ch. 18
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Confidence, Cats

“The point cannot be just survival, nor even survival in numbers. Survival is just as well achieved by much less ambitions creatures which go in for sheer number. (In fact a cost-benefit-conscious gene that really understood its business would, no doubt, have remained on board something like the amoeba; it will probably be amoung the last to go.) Nor is it survival-as-society, since many animals achieve this despite a lot of bickering.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 148.

Business, Animals

“Indeed it is a doubtful fact whether clever people are ever very agreeable; they are too much absorbed by one particular pursuit, to bound lightly enough over those generalities which are the stepping-stones of conversation; they feel as if they ought to say something worth remembering.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

People, Feeling

“For adult man with his mechanized methods of solution, proof is sometimes needed, as here, that an action was a real achievement, not something self-evident; that the breaking off a branch from a whole tree, for instance, is an achievement over and above the simple use of a stick, is shown at once by animals les”

Wolfgang Köhler book The Mentality of Apes

Source: The Mentality of Apes, 1925, p. 94; As cited in: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, 1964, p. 103

Tree, Animals

“Now begins the true pilgrimage: Parsifal with the lance in hand! Here begins the symbol of renunciation! The renunciation lies, symbolically expressed, in the words, with the lance in hand! A renunciation is first, then, a renunciation in the true sense of the word, when one does not do something that one has recognized as desirable and has wished to do. The sojourn of Parsifal with the lance in hand corresponds to the 40 days that Christ shall have spent in the wastelands. It corresponds to the trials and tribulations which all candidates of all the old religions, of all mystical secret societies etc. had to undergo, before they could become initiates. This sojourn also corresponds therefore, to the 40 days of the fast and abstention, which yet today the initiates of a mystical society impose on their candidates as a test before they are left to study the mystical secret, salvational — teachings.”

Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer

II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)

Secret, Religion, Sense, Study

“It’s early in the process for me, but my infatuation with fame is waning, my need for external approval and the control of other people’s opinions is expiring. Practically I’ve decided that profits from this book will go towards creating a place where recovering addicts like me can run a business based on the ideas in this book. A café and production company run to create community, not money, democratically managed by the workforce. No bosses. No profit. No bullshit. Selling food sourced ethically, grown locally, and served by people who have had a Revolution in their own lives and are now able to learn and give back. Supporting modest creative projects, building a community of people who want to be part of something other than the toxic hegemony. We will start small but we will grow quickly because we have a limitless resource and we are providing an alternative to a dying system. There are no limits to what we can achieve if we behave collectively, responsibly, and humanely.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Money, People, Books, Food

“Against all the retrogressive endeavors (Bohm, Schrödinger etc. and in some sense also Einstein) I am sure that the statistical character of the ψ-function and hence of nature’s laws – on which you insisted from the very beginning against Schrödinger’s resistance – will define the style of the laws at least for some centuries. It may be that later, e. g. in connection with the living processes, one will find something entirely new, but to dream of a way back, back to the classical style of Newton-Maxwell (and these are just dreams these gentlemen are giving themselves up to) seems to me hopeless, digressive, bad taste. And, we could add, it is not even a beautiful dream.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Letter to Max Born, December 1954, in Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a, Springer, 1999, p. 887, as translated in J. Kofler and A. Zeilinger, "Quantum Information and Randomness", European Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2010, pp. 469–480

Law, Beauty, Dreams, Way

“Never stick your hand out and let someone squirt something into it unless you know what it is.”

Kerry Jackson

Radio From Hell (January 18, 2007)

“Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Line 368.

Love, Life, Sea

“Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens — leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections — then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Hostility, Children, World, Support

“To people off alone, as we were, there is something stirring about finding evidences of human labour and care in the soil of an empty country. It comes to you as a sort of message, makes you feel differently about the ground you walk over every day.”

Willa Cather book The Professor's House

Book II, Ch. 2
The Professor's House (1925)

People, Feeling, Country

“All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 21

Sister, Time, Housing

“The workers of the nation were tired of waiting for corporate industry to right their economic wrongs, to alleviate their social agony and to grant them their political rights. Despairing of fair treatment, they resolved to do something for themselves.”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

Labor and the Nation speech (September 3, 1937)

Waiting, Despair

“The eleventh day of the eleventh month has always seemed to me to be special. Even if the reason for it fell apart as the years went on, it was a symbol of something close to the high part of the heart. Perhaps a life that stretches through two or three wars takes its first war rather seriously, but I still think we should have kept the name "Armistice Day."”

Walt Kelly (1913–1973) American cartoonist

Its implications were a little more profound, a little more hopeful.
Ten Everlovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo (1959), p. 100

Life, War, Hope, Thinking

“I think that to all living things there is a pleasure in the exercise of their energies, and that even beasts rejoice in being lithe and swift and strong. But a man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as a part of the human race, he creates. If we work thus we shall be men, and our days will be happy and eventful.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Signs of Change (1888), Useful Work versus Useless Toil

Men, Happiness, Pleasure, Age

“What delighted me was that it's 30 years from now — not next week or next year. … That would be totally hopeless; that would be terrifying, in fact. Time is on our side in this one — that's why it's such a wonderful illustration of the process… I say 30 years is a good long time to do something about it if it is a problem … We should be thankful we have this kind of notice.”

Brian G. Marsden (1937–2010) British astronomer

On initial reports that Asteroid 1997 XF11 could be on a trajectory to hit the Earth in 2028; as quoted in "Man in the News; A Cheery Herald of Fear: Brian Geoffrey Marsden" in The New York Times (13 March 1998) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E2D91F30F930A25750C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.

Problem, Time

“We have only one real shot at "liberation," and that is to emancipate ourselves from within. It is the thesis of this book that personal, psychological dependency—the deep wish to be taken care of by others—is the chief force holding women down today. I call this "The Cinderella Complex"—a network of largely repressed attitudes and fears that keeps women in a kind of half-light, retreating from the full use of their minds and creativity. Like Cinderella, women today are still waiting for something external to "transform their lives."”

Colette Dowling (1938)

Source: The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence (1981), p. 31

Women, Books, Fear, Light

“Give me an adventure. I’m not talking about some massive adventure. Just something that would make getting fired seem small. Something that I might remember when I’m old.”
“I can’t predict the future,” I said, “but based on what little I know so far, I’m afraid it has to be a massive adventure or nothing.”
“Great!”
“Probably the kind of adventure that ends in a mass burial.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Cord and Erasmas, Part 6, "Peregrin"
Anathem (2008)

Future

“Interviewer: I read a post on the Internet from a young girl who had been victimized by someone and her position was like, "I can talk about this now because Fiona Apple can talk about what happened to her." Do you look at yourself as a role model for women and girls who've had this experience?
Fiona: That's the only reason I ever brought the whole rape thing up. It's a terrible thing, but it happens to so many people. I mean, 80 percent of the people I've told have said right back to me, "That happened to me too." It's so common, and so ridiculous that it's a hard thing to talk about. It angers me so much because something like that happens to you and you carry it around for the rest of your life. No matter how much therapy you go through, no matter how much healing you go through, it's part of you. I just feel that it's such a tragedy that so many people have to bear the extra burden of having to keep it secret from everyone else. As if it's too icky a subject to burden other people with and everyone's going to think you're a victim forever. Then you've labeled yourself a victim, and you've been taken advantage of, and you're ruined, and you're soiled, and you're not pure, you know.If I'm in a position where people are looking up to me in any way, then it's absolutely my responsibility to be open and honest about this, because if I'm not, what does that say to people? It doesn't change a person -- well, it does change a person but it doesn't take anything away from you. It can only strengthen you. It has made me so angry in the past. Like I wanted to say it to somebody. I really wanted somebody to connect with, somebody to understand me, somebody to comfort me. But I felt like I couldn't say anything about because it was taboo to talk about.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Nuvo, "Fiona Apple: The NUVO Interview" April [1997]

Life, Women, People, Secret

“Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don’t think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008), p. 24

Love, Thinking

“But we're still left with structural or compositional elements. The problems aren't any different. I still have to compose a picture, and if you make an object [as Donald Judd does] you have to organize the structure. I don't think our work that radical in any sense because you don't find any really new compositional or structural element. I don't know if that exists. It's like the idea of the color you haven't seen before. Does something exist that's as radical as a diagonal that's not a diagonal? Or a straight line or a compositional element that you can't describe?”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

quote from Stella, reacting in the artist-talk on Donald Judd who emphasis the 'whole' of an art work
Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 119

Color, Idea, Problem, Thinking

“There's just something a little bit unseemly to me that Chelsea's out there calling up celebrities, saying support my mom and, apparently she's also calling these super delegates.”

David Shuster (1967) American television journalist

David Shuster: Chelsea Being "Pimped Out?", Feb 7, 2008 ( YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIxgw04Y0Fc): On Chelsea Clinton campaigning for her mother. On MSNBC

Moms, Support

“I think it's bullshit. People don't want to accept the responsibility for their own weakness so they place the blame on something that they're not responsible for, like a disease or genetics. As far as studies go, I could prove I was from Mars if you gave me enough time and enough resources.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

page 302
A Million Little Pieces (2003)

People, Disease, Thinking, Study

“The real prize is never delivered by memory or by imagination, but by something above them.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power

Imagination, Memory

“Although Bertrand Russell suffered unpopularity in some quarters for his role as a political dissenter, he enjoyed that role immensely. There was more than a touch of exhibitionism in the riskless sit-downs of his last years when he made well-publicized gestures to 'Ban the Bomb' that were as futile as they were ill-advised. I once wondered aloud to him whether his temperamental bias toward nonconformity and dissent was an expression not so much of intellectual courage as of the aristocrat's disdain of the commoner and his desire to épater le bourgeois. He replied with disarming frankness: 'Hook, I think you have something there…”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

Out of Step (1985)

Courage, Thinking, Suffering

“Sophocles taught us that the greatest of all human laws is justice… and I think that is something we have to remember.”

Alexis Tsipras (1974) Greek politician

As quoted in " Greek Prime Minister Tsipras Quotes Sophocles: What Do Ancient Greek Playwrights And Philosophers Say About Debt? http://www.ibtimes.com/greek-prime-minister-tsipras-quotes-sophocles-what-do-ancient-greek-playwrights-1999857", ibtimes.com (08 July 2015).

Justice, Law, Thinking

“But whoever thinks that beauty is something he can enjoy exclusively for himself just by abandoning other people and closing his eyes to the human life of which he is part—he is not the friend of beauty. He ends up either as Pétur Þríhross's poet, or his secretary. He who doesn't fight every day of his life to the last breath against the representatives of evil, against the living images of evil who rule Sviðinsvík—he blasphemes by taking the word beauty into his mouth.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Örn Úlfar
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Life, People, Beauty, Thinking

“To be a child is something one learns, as one learns the names of rivers or the kings of France. Childhood, for a child, is a sort of falseness, woodenness, stoniness, a lesson recited. Many children are aware of this — that is, aware of being children as a special, prosy condition: "We can't do that! We're children!" Playing children is a long boring game with occasional exciting moments.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Everybody's Childhood"
The Writing on the Wall and Other Literary Essays (1970)

Children, Game, Learning, Childhood

“I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising.”

Nick Hanauer (1959) American businessman

"Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming" TED (conference) August 2014 http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming/transcript?language=en

World

“Finally, have we lamented along with the Saints that we see ourselves constrained to endure in the world; and have we desired to leave it in order to flee the danger that there will be something it corrupts?”

Louis Tronson (1622–1700) French Roman Catholic priest

Enfin, gémissons-nous souvent avec les Saints de nous voir contraints de demeurer encore dans le monde; et avons-nous désiré d'en sortir pour fuir le danger qu'il y a de s'y corrompre? Examens particuliers sur divers sujets, p. 322 http://books.google.com/books?id=esY9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA322 Examens particuliers sur divers sujets [Examination of Conscience upon Special Subjects] (1690)

World

“I'm sure if we open up the dictionary, we could prove that with semantics that are various, we can prove that there is a definition of slavery that absolutely fits the bill there, when I'm talking about a bankrupt country that will owe somebody something down the line if we don't change things that is, we will be shackled.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

CNN Interview with Jake Tapper [2013-11-12, THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER, Jake, Tapper, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1311/12/cg.01.html]
2013

Change, Country

“Hand in glove, the good people laugh, yes we may be hidden by rags,
But we've something they'll never have”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from the song "Hand In Glove"
From songs

People

“[what men are thinking] I'd like a beer and I'd like to see something naked.”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Totally Committed (1998)

Men, Beer, Thinking

“I have thought a lot about the question of titles. I must confess that I find any for works that take off from an arbitrary starting point and end with something real…. [Miro allowed Pierre Matisse to make titles, based on the] real things…. [if they do] not evoke some tendency or other, something I want to avoid completely [very probably Miro meant here: the Surrealists ]. [advising Pierre Matisse; who showed then several modern European painters in New York].”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

In a letter to his art-seller Pierre Matisse, 12 October 1934; as quoted in Calder Miro, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 82, note 24
1915 - 1940

Question

“"Hey, there’s something falling down in there," said the chief clerk. Gregor tried to suppose to himself that what had happened to him might some day also happen to the chief clerk. There was no denying that anything was possible.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis (1915)

“But you were in the restaurant business before?? Marco-Pierre White or something…. The Titanic – well here's another bloody disaster you're in now! (To Syed before Alexa is fired after the infamous catering task when the Invicta team lose because they bought an excessive number of chickens to make pizzas).”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

The Apprentice, Series 2

Business

“There surely is something to these terms, but too often they’re the result of minds intent on discovering meaning where there is only probability.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (p. 62)

“There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Appearance

“There is something about human nature that has to be understood, and so … I've shifted my attention from an interest in unity to an interest in creativity.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

The Open Mind interview (1985)

Nature

“Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A great man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this way.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King

Men, Hunger, God, Health

“A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”

C. P. Scott (1846–1932) British journalist, publisher and politician

Manchester Guardian, May 5, 1921. http://www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom/story/0,11718,850815,00.html

Truth, Soul, Suffering

“The fact is that unless you experience something for yourself it does not exist for you. If God exists you must have the experience of God in the moment; otherwise you are absent and God cannot exist for you.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

God

“University professors, restricted in this way, are quite happy about the matter, for their real concern is to earn with credit an honest livelihood for themselves and also for their wives and children and moreover to enjoy a certain prestige in the eyes of the public. On the other hand, the deeply stirred mind of the real philosopher, whose whole concern is to look for the key to our existence, as mysterious as it is precarious, is regarded by them as something mythological, if indeed the man so affected does not even appear to them to be obsessed by a monomania, should he ever be met with among them. For that a man could really be in dead earnest about philosophy does not as a rule occur to anyone, least of all to a lecturer thereon; just as the most sceptical Christian is usually the Pope. It has, therefore, been one of the rarest events for a genuine philosopher to be at the same time a lecturer in philosophy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Inzwischen bleiben die solchermaaßen beschränkten Universitätsphilosophie bei der Sache ganz wohlgemuth; weil ihr eigentlicher Ernst darin liegt, mit Ehren ein redliches Auskommen für sich, nebst Weib und Kind, zu erwerben, auch ein gewisses Ansehn vor den Leuten zu genießen; hingegen das tiefbewegte Gemüth eines wirklichen Philosophen, dessen ganzer und großer Ernst im Aufsuchen eines Schlüssels zu unserm, so rätselhaften wie mißlichen Daseyn liegt, von ihnen zu den mythologischen Wesen gezählt wird; wenn nicht etwa» gar der damit Behaftete, sollte er ihnen je vorkommen, ihnen als von Monomanie besessen erscheint. Denn daß es mit der Philosophie so recht eigentlicher, bitterer Ernst seyn könne, läßt wohl, in der Regel, kein Mensch sich weniger träumen, als ein Docent derselben; gleichwie der ungläubigste Christ der Papst zu seyn pflegt. Daher gehört es denn auch zu den seltensten Fällen, daß ein wirklicher Philosoph zugleich ein Docent der Philosophie gewesen wäre.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 153, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 141
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Happiness, Children, Way, Universe

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.
…
'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

Love, Life, Wisdom, War

“I cannot come back to you. Not yet... I do not yet want to have a child by you. I must wait, if it comes again, or if something else comes out of it..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

quote in a letter from Paris, 1906, to Otto in Worpswede; as quoted in Tromp M, Ravelli AC, Reitsma JB, Bonsel GJ, Mol BW: Increasing maternal age at first pregnancy planning: health outcomes and associated costs. In 'J. Epidemiol Community Health', Dec. 2010, p. 4
1906 + 1907

Waiting

“We don't know much about him. We do know that he came from a sperm meeting an egg. Actually, his name is Charles Mulholland. We don't know what he does, but he sure looks like he knows something.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

On Chuck, Smother 1997

“…Hades had opened its gates and vomited forth the basest, most despicable, most horrible demons. In the course of my life I had seen something of untrammeled human insights of horror of panic. I had taken part in a dozen battles in the First World War, had experienced barrages, gassings, going over the top. I had witnessed the turmoil of the postwar era, the crushing uprisings, street battles, meeting hall brawls. I was present among the bystanders during the Hitler Putsch in 1923 in Munich. I saw the early period of Nazi rule in Berlin. But none of this was comparable to those days in Vienna. What was unleashed upon Vienna had nothing to do with [the] seizure of power in Germany. …What was unleashed upon Vienna was a torrent of envy, jealousy, bitterness, blind, malignant craving for revenge. All better instincts were silenced… only the torpid masses had been unchained. …It was the witch's Sabbath of the mob. All that makes for human dignity was buried.”

Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977) German writer and playwright

As quoted & translated by Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory (2006) referencing Als Wärs ein Stück von Mir (1966) see also, A Part of Myself: Portrait of an Epoch Tr. Richard and Clara Winston (1984)

Life, War, World, Jealousy

“There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

God

“I’ve always resented the word maturity, primarily, I think, because it is most often used as a club. If you do something that someone doesn’t like, you lack maturity, regardless of the actual merits of your action. Too, it seems to me that what is most often called maturity is nothing more than disengagement from life. If you meet life squarely, you are likely to make mistakes, do things you wish you hadn’t, say things you wish you could retract or phrase more felicitously, and, in short, fumble your way along. Those “mature” people whose lives are even without a single sour note or a single mistake, who never fumble, manage only at the cost of original thought and original action. They do without the successes as well as the failures. This has never appealed to me and that is another reason I could never accept the common image of maturity that was presented to me.”

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 20 (p. 241).

Life, People, Way, Failure

“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

The Agnostic's Prayer from the novel Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969)

Way, Forgiveness

“The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, "Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home." And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.”

Thornton Wilder The Matchmaker

Barnaby, in Act 4
The Matchmaker (1954)

Home

“Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop doing such good.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

XI, 4
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book XI

“When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult and unhappy business. And so most of the time you're rather unhappy, actually, with this confusion. You can't penetrate this thing. Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it, the idea? And I get this feeling all the time that I'm an ape trying to put two sticks together, so I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Video interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lytxafTXg6c dated 1963

Stupidity, Feeling, Idea, Understanding

“Have you noticed anything strange about him?
Strange? We humans insist on inhabiting a charnel ground - isn't that strange enough for spiritual creatures without splitting hairs?
He seems to be two different men. His personality switches from moment to moment.
Only two? Perhaps there is something wrong with your eyes. Look more closely and you will see he changes with every exhalation. So do I. So do you.”

John Burdett book Bangkok Haunts

Bangkok Haunts, Ch. 22.

Men, Change, Personality

“We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses, those dirty shops. They ought to go. I’ll just say that right now, you know. But we need African American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

Marion Barry (1936–2014) American politician and former mayor of Washington, D.C.

Primary speech http://archive.is/Z69uv (April 3, 2012). 2010s

Business

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin" http://books.google.com/books?id=OF-YSMKCVwMC&q=%22A+proud+man+is+always+looking+down+on+things+and+people+and+of+course+as+long+as+you+are+looking+down+you+cannot+see+something+that+is+above+you%22&pg=PA124#v=onepage Mere Christianity (1952)

People

“I don't want to be confronted by my future grandchild and them say 'Why didn't you do something?'”

Charles, Prince of Wales (1948) son of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

The Prince of Wales on conservation http://www.rias.co.uk/prince-of-wales-style-icon/ abc News http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2013/08/prince-william-kate-register-prince-georges-birth/, 2 August 2013 2010s

Future

“Well, I certainly was not going to study physics, and I knew I was not going to study biology, but I could have become a sociologist or an anthropologist. However, I found sociology a little soft. I think that somewhere in my mind, I probably already had the notion – which turned out to be right – that if I was going to be a social scientist of some kind, I would like a rigorous social science. The analytical aspect of economics already appealed to me. That must have been so. It was not really a matter of chance. But if my wife had said ‘oh, no, economics was terribly boring’, I would probably have found something else to do.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

in Karen Ilse Horn (ed.) Roads to Wisdom, Conversations With Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009)

Thinking, Study, Science, Chance

“We consider a prisoner unfortunate. He is unfortunate in two ways — because he has done something wrong and because he is deprived of his liberty. Therefore we should treat him kindly, because of his misfortune, for otherwise he would become hard and bitter and would not be sorry he had done wrong. Ozma thinks that one who has committed a fault did so because he was not strong and brave; therefore she puts him in prison to make him strong and brave. When that is accomplished he is no longer a prisoner, but a good and loyal citizen and everyone is glad that he is now strong enough to resist doing wrong. You see, it is kindness that makes one strong and brave; and so we are kind to our prisoners.”

L. Frank Baum book The Patchwork Girl of Oz

The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Later Oz novels

Way, Thinking, Strong

“Forty years on, Amnesty International has secured many victories. Its files are full of letters from former prisoners of conscience or torture victims thanking the organisation for making a difference. Torture is now banned by international agreement. Every year more countries reject the death penalty. The world will soon have an International Criminal Court that will be able to ensure that those accused of the worst crimes in the world will face justice. The Court's very existence will deter some crimes.
But the challenges are still great. Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance" to be carried out by their officials with impunity.
Those who today still feel a sense of impotence can do something: they can support Amnesty International. They can help it to stand up for freedom and justice.”

Peter Benenson (1921–2005) English human rights activist

Source: Amnesty International (2002) The Amnesty International Report. p. 22

Death, Secret, World, Justice

“The psychology of a complex mind must differ almost as much from that of a simple, mechanized mind as its psychology would from ours; because something that must underlie and perhaps be even greater than sex is involved.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The world, the flesh & the devil (1929) (1969), p. 66

Sex

“Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

As quoted in Time (28 August 1972).

Happiness

“Henceforth let no woman believe a man's oath, let none believe that a man's speeches can be trustworthy. They, while their mind desires something and longs eagerly to gain it, nothing fear to swear, nothing spare to promise; but as soon as the lust of their greedy mind is satisfied, they fear not then their words, they heed not their perjuries.”
Nunc iam nulla viro iuranti femina credat, nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles; quis dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci, nil metuunt iurare, nihil promittere parcunt: sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libido est, dicta nihil metuere, nihil periuria curant.

Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus

LXIV
Carmina

Fear

“There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon;
But through the clouds I'll never float
Until I have a little Boat,
Shaped like the crescent-moon.”

William Wordsworth Peter Bell

Prologue, stanza 1.
Peter Bell (1798)

Horse, Flying

“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests sometimes that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Mythical Phase: Symbol as Archetype

Nature, Science, Time

“LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)

Sex, Idea, Understanding

“The intellectual is called on the carpet. … Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 192

“What interests me is to paint the kind of anti-sensitivity that impregnates modern civilization. I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward — neo-Zen and all that. Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Quote of Lichtenstein in: Interview by G.R. Swenson (1963); as quoted in Painters on Painting, Eric Protter (1971) p. 263
1960's

World, Art, Thinking, Painting

“The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present—and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 2 : The World We Have Lost

Children, World, Way, Problem

“I’m not waiting to die, I don’t believe I’ll die, I am waiting for something else.
To arrive. To understand. To be at my destination.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Part 1 “Channels”, Interlude II (p. 65)
The Scar (2002)

Understanding, Waiting

“One cannot really believe that an emotion exists outside one's own consciousness without participating in that emotion and making it to some extent one's own. … Similarly, I can't in any serious sense believe that something I am doing is hurting you without my image of that hurt acting on me as the hurt itself would do if I myself experienced it, encouraging me to desist.”

Timothy Sprigge (1932–2007) British philosopher

Source: The Animal Welfare Movement and the Foundations of Ethics, p. 93

Sense, Hurt

“The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

Source: An Introduction to English Poetry (2002), Ch. 21: Song (p. 115)

Music, Feeling

“I was actually looking forward to it. I just want to play my character, and it does not matter what age I am playing. If I have played the journey from a spinster to a married lady in the show, then why should I have a problem playing a mother? This is something I owe to the show.”

Dipika Kakar (1986) Indian actress

About the character http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tv/news/hindi/Dipika-Simar-Kakar-I-wasnt-uncomfortable-playing-a-makkhi-nor-found-it-funny/articleshow/54364901.cms

Age, Problem

“If something goes wrong in Syria, many countries of the region will feel a negative impact. We can’t support isolation because of the lesson we drew from Libya.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

"We won’t let Syria become 2nd Libya"(November 2011) http://rt.com/politics/syria-libya-russian-stance-285/

Feeling, Support, Country

Quotes about something page 69

Quotes about something
page 69