Quotes about something
page 76

Arthur Hugh Clough photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
William H. Rehnquist photo

“Well, it's just a sense of personal satisfaction. Just like taking a good photograph or painting a picture or playing a good golf game or something, it's the thing in itself that justifies it.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

On writing.
Booknotes http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/index_print.asp?ProgramID=1107 television interview (July 5, 1992)

Mircea Eliade photo
Kambri Crews photo
Melinda M. Snodgrass photo
Phil Brooks photo

“I would love to talk to you about that, Josh, but there's something else I want to bring up, and that's this. (Holds up a screenplay entitled "Live For The Moment: The Jeff Hardy Story") I had a friend in a fancy Hollywood agency the other day, and he ran across this little gem. Somebody actually took the time to write a screenplay about the Jeff Hardy story. So I was paging through it, and lo and behold, it culminates, of course, with Jeff conquering his demons and beating me her tonight in a TLC match at SummerSlam. What a great feelgood story, Josh, all except, of course, for the ending, which is not reality-based. It's fake, it's phony, just like everybody who lives in this town. I'd go as far as to say that I'm the only real person in this building right now. I wish I could say it's a Los Angeles epidemic, but the fact is it's worldwide. You have people that falsely idolize what they see in movies and on television; you have housewives in Iowa that subscribe to U. S. Weekly, US Weekly, or whatever it's called, so they can model their hair after Kate Gosselin, instead of helping their own children with their homework; you have little kids all over the world, millions of them, who idolize the "hip, cool star", and it doesn't matter if that hip cool star is some dork vampire in Twilight, or if it's Jeff Hardy. It doesn't matter if that hip cool star has a reprehensible, reckless lifestyle. You know, it doesn't matter if the collective intelligence of this entire country continues to spiral downward, day in and day out. It doesn't matter as long as it's cool, right? You know why they don't make movies about a guy like me? It's cause I don't support your poisoned society. I don't support this den of iniquity known as Hollywood. No, instead, I'm dismissed as being preachy, except I'm not preachy—I never have been. I just tell the truth. You know, I'm not a screenwriter either, but tonight I think I'll take a stab at it. Tonight I'm gonna rewrite the ending of "The Jeff Hardy Story."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

It's gonna be horrifying. It's gonna be very, very graphic. It might be hard to watch for a lot of people, but it will have a happy ending: new World Heavyweight Champion—CM Punk.
At SummerSlam
Friday Night SmackDown

Marc Chagall photo

“If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention. It is a result I did not seek. It is something that may be found afterwards, and which can be interpreted according to taste.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

In Marc Chagall 1887-1985: Painting As Poetry by Ingo F. Walther, Rainer Metzger, p. 78
after 1930

Allen West (politician) photo

“The first thing you’ve got to do is study and understand what we’re up against. You must realize that this is not a religion that you’re fighting against. You’re fighting against a theo-political belief system and construct. You’re fighting against something that’s been doing this thing since 622 AD - 7th century - 1,388 years. You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at LePonto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? You want to ask the Christian – I mean the Germanic and Austrian – knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened at Constantinople and why today it’s called Istanbul? Because they lost that fight in 1453. You need to get into the Qur'an, you need to understand their precepts, you need to read the Sunnah, you need to read the Hadith and then you can really understand this is not a perversion: They are doing exactly what this book says. I want to close by saying this, and I think we’ve said this all through this morning so far: Until we get principled leadership in the United States that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is and then understand their goals and objectives - which is on any jihadist website - and then come up with the right and proper goals and objectives to not only secure our republic, but to secure western civilization.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

Response to question: Why would [Islamist terrorists] warp a religion to justify attacking the United States. [Hudson Institute, Reclaim American Liberty Conference, January 13, 2010, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=hudson_upcoming_events&id=741, March 22, 2011]
2010s

Sarah Dessen photo
Sarah Palin photo
Philip Johnson photo
Daniel Kahneman photo
Bob Seger photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
John Constable photo

“And however one's mind may be elevated, and kept us to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters — still Nature is the fountain's head, the source from whence all originally must spring — and should an artist continue his practice without referring to nature he must soon form a manner, & be reduced to the same deplorable situation as the French painter mentioned by Sir J. Reynolds, who told him that he had long ceased to look at nature for she only put him out.For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind — but have neither endeavoured to make my performances look as if really executed by other men….. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to common-place people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall make some laborious studies from nature — and I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

3 quotes in Constable's letter to John Dunthorne (29 May 1802), from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 2, pp. 31-32
1800s - 1810s

Samuel Butler photo
Jane Roberts photo
Sun Myung Moon photo

“In particular, unification represents my purpose to bring about God’s ideal world. Unification is not union. Union is when two things come together. Unification is when two become one. “Unification Church” became our commonly known name later, but it was given to us by others. In the beginning, university students referred to us as “the Seoul Church.” I do not like using the word kyo-hoi in its common usage to mean church. But I like its meaning from the original Chinese characters. Kyo means “to teach,” and Hoi means “gathering.” The Korean word means, literally, “gathering for teaching.” The word for religion, jong-kyo, is composed of two Chinese characters meaning “central” and “teaching,” respectively. When the word church means a gathering where spiritual fundamentals are taught, it has a good meaning. But the meaning of the word kyo-hoi does not provide any reason for people to share with each other. People in general do not use the word kyo-hoi with that meaning. I did not want to place ourselves in this separatist type of category. My hope was for the rise of a church without a denomination. True religion tries to save the nation, even if it must sacrifice its own religious body to do so; it tries to save the world, even at the cost of sacrificing its nation; and it tries to save humanity, even if this means sacrificing the world. By this understanding, there can never be a time when the denomination takes precedence. It was necessary to hang out a church sign, but in my heart I was ready to take it down at any time. As soon as a person hangs a sign that says “church,” he is making a distinction between church and not church. Taking something that is one and dividing itinto two is not right. This was not my dream. It is not the path I chose to travel. If I need to take down that sign to save the nation or the world, I am ready to do so at any time.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

2009, As a Peaceloving Global Citizen http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/TFbiography.pdf, page 56.

“I always say I'm an escape artist, Style is something I've always tried to avoid. I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

in 'Sketches for a Series', interview with art-critic Rose Slivka; as quoted in 'Elaine de Kooning, Artist and Teacher, Dies at 68', New York Times, Grace Glueck, February 2, 1989
1972 - 1989

Rani Mukerji photo
Tad Williams photo

“You have something that might be more use to me than either gold or power—something that in fact brings both in its train.”
“And what is that?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

The count leaned forward. “Knowledge.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 2, Chapter 21, “The Frightened Ones” (p. 491).

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“Parliament is a potent engine, and its enactments must always do something, but they very seldom do what the originators of these enactments meant.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Statement to the Associated Chambers of Commerce (March 1891)
1890s

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac photo
Tigran Petrosian photo

“Some consider that when I play I am excessively cautious, but it seems to me that the question may be a different one. I try to avoid chance. Those who rely on chance should play cards or roulette. Chess is something quite different.”

Tigran Petrosian (1929–1984) Soviet Georgian Armenian chess player and chess writer

Attributed without citation in "Tigran Petrosian's Best Games" http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014968 at chessgames.com

Dinesh D'Souza photo
Billy Joel photo

“Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Allentown.
Song lyrics, The Nylon Curtain (1982)

“Fear is a mental projection of something that has not happened.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 155

Bashō Matsuo photo

“Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

sabi wa ku no iro nari. kanjaku naru ku wo iu ni arazu. tatoeba, roujin no katchuu wo taishi senjou ni hataraki, kinshuu wo kazari goen ni haberitemo, oi no sugata aru ga gotoshi.
Classical Japanese Database, Translation #42 http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/translation/view/42 (Translation: Robert Hass)
Statements

John Bright photo

“The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plough as it is of him who minds the loom…If there be one view of the question which stimulates me to harder work in this cause than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom…And then a fat and sleek dean, a dignitary of the Church and a great philosopher, recommends for the consumption of the people—he did not read a paper about the supplies that were to be had in the great valley of the Mississippi—but he said that there were swede, turnip and mangel-wurzel; and the Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, if to out-Herod Herod himself, recommends hot water and a pinch of curry-powder. The people of England have not, even under thirty years of Corn Law influence, been sunk so low as to submit tamely to this insult and wrong. It is enough that a law should be passed to make your toil valueless, to make your skill and labor unavailing to procure for you a fair supply of the common necessaries of life—but when to this grievous iniquity they add the insult of telling you to go, like beasts that perish, to mangel-wurzel, or to something which even the beasts themselves cannot eat, then I believe the people of England will rise, and with one voice proclaim the downfall of this odious system.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League meeting (summer 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 93-94.
1840s

Glen Cook photo
Michael Ende photo
Naim Qassem photo
Parker Palmer photo
John Steinbeck photo
Lauren Southern photo
Jack Osbourne photo

“I'd have to say that Muay Thai is something special. It's really demanding and it's becoming popular all around the world.”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

The Nation, April 28 2007

William Trufant Foster photo
Bob Parsons photo

“When you're in the middle of nowhere and you see something moving in the jungle, you're forced to become a creative problem solver.”

Bob Parsons (1950) United States Marine

Forbes: GoDaddy Billionaire Founder Bob Parsons On His Passion For Golf And Motorcycles https://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2017/10/18/godaddy-billionaire-founder-bob-parsons-on-his-passion-for-golf-and-motorcycles/ (18 October 2017)

Gustav Stresemann photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo
Siddharth Katragadda photo
Iain Banks photo

“He looked up from it at the stars again, and the view was warped and distorted by something in his eyes, which at first he thought was rain.”

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 4 “The Passed Pawn” (p. 390).

Howard S. Becker photo
Ben Croshaw photo

“I once saw some magician bloke turn a carton of orange juice into orange juice, beer, milk, coke and ginger ale. That makes him five times better than Jesus or something.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Why it Would Kick Arse to be Jesus
Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

Paul Sloane photo
Marcos Pontes photo
Colin Wilson photo
Alan Kay photo
S. H. Raza photo
Daniel Radcliffe photo

“It was very emotional, actually. In the front of the book I wrote something Anton Chekhov wrote to the woman he ended up spending the rest of his life with: "Hello, the last page of my life."”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

Which I thought was very appropriate.
On reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series, as quoted in "Daniel Radcliffe" by Chris Norris in Details (October 2008) http://men.style.com/details/blogs/thegadabout/2008/09/daniel-radcliff.html

Andrew Vachss photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
John Banville photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Dennis Ross photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
Nastassja Kinski photo

“I always fall in love with someone while I'm working in a film. It's a joy to get up in the morning. Sometimes when I'm not infatuated, I just make things up in my mind. Making a film is such an intense thing. You're eliminating everything in your life and you're absorbed into the world of the movie. It's exciting. It's like somebody saying you have an illness and you only have this short time to live. Then you live it that life is over with. Good-bye. You never see any of the people again. But meanwhile you have this short life in which you can do and feel and fantasize about all kinds of things because you know it will soon be over. So I always fall in love. Then you slip out of it, like a skin you take off, and you're naked and you're cold but it's exciting because there is going to be something new. My relationships are as intense and as giving and as short as my parts are. I would pump everything into a person. I would give my left arm that it was for life, but it dies so shortly. And when it dies, it doesn't even leave traces. The relationship vanishes into space. When I finish a part, it's the same feeling. I leave people and people leave me, I leave parts and parts leave me. I say it is 'the flow of life,' but it affects me terribly. Every once in a while I have such a breakdown, question every move.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Henry Taylor photo

“When you give, therefore, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Money.
Notes from Life (1853)

John Gray photo
James Taylor photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything.”

James Agate (1877–1947) British diarist and critic

Ego 4 (1940), p. 139, November 13, 1939.

Steve Scalise photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
George Steiner photo

“There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Quoted in The Daily Telegraph (London, 1989-05-23).

“Long words, fat talk — they may tell us something about ourselves. Has the passion for fat in the language increased as self-confidence has waned?”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"American Fat" (p.46)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Jerry Coyne photo
David Allen photo

“What do you want to have true? Pick something between total fantasy & 51% believable, get going, & readjust as you learn.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

17 January 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/26824930679062528
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Tell me something only you know and make a new friend.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

A New Friend http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21370/A_New_Friend
From the poems written in English

Georges Clemenceau photo
Tim Powers photo
Tim O'Reilly photo

“Just do something that lights you up, and lights up your customers, and lights up the world and scale to that.”

Tim O'Reilly (1954) Irish computer programmer

Interview in New York http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/09/philosopher-tim-oreilly-lights-up.html by Publishing Point group (29 September 2010)

Abbie Hoffman photo
Eder Jofre photo

“We see by means of something which illumines us, which we do not see.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Vemos por algo que nos ilumina; por algo que no vemos.
Voces (1943)

Marwan Kenzari photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.”

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

The Guardian [UK] (28 July 1989)

Arjo Klamer photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Tyra Banks photo

“I've been singing for six years. I've been in and out of the studios with top producers, but it wasn't something I was ready to express to the public or to the press. I wasn't ready to come out. I wanted to perfect my voice and be 100 percent positive that I could come out right.”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

Margena A. Christian (March 1, 2004) "Tyra Banks: creator of TV's 'America's next top model' tells why singing is her next move" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_9_105/ai_114007282 Jet.

Dogen photo
Northrop Frye photo

“The supremacy of the verbal over the monumental has something about it of the supremacy of life over death.”

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

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter 8, p. 200

Iain Banks photo
Don Marquis photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo