Quotes about something
page 86

“Many Frenchmen see their society as drifting in uncertain waters without an anchor. They are concerned by increasingly powerless elected governments, distant bureaucrats who intervene in every aspect of people’s lives, and an economic system that promises much but delivers little. The advocates of Western decline claim that Europeans no longer believe in anything and are thus doomed to lose the fight against homegrown Islamists who passionately believe in the little they know of Islam. A note of comedy is injected into this tragedy by people like President Hollande who keep repeating that the terror attacks had “nothing to do with Islam.” Is Hollande an authority on what is and what is not Islam? Talking heads repeat ad nauseam that France is not at war against Islam. OK. However, part of Islam is certainly at war against France, and the rest of the civilized world, including a majority of Muslims across the globe. One’s enemy is not whom one wants him to be but whom he wants to be. The Charlie killers saw themselves as jihadis, and it is only in seeing them as such that one could start dealing with them in an effective way. In designating them as Islamists, one is not “at war against Islam.” Millions of French are expected to take part in marches across the country today to pay respect to the 17 people, including 10 journalists, who were killed in the attacks. There is going to be just one slogan: “We are all Charlie.” Do they believe it? The French would do well to remember that, once all is said and done, they still live in one of the few countries in the world where they can think and say what they like, a state of bliss a majority of Muslims across the globe could only dream of. And, the prophets of decline notwithstanding, that is something worth living and fighting for.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

What happens to Western values if no one stands up against Islam? http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/what-happens-to-western-values-if-no-one-stands-up-against-islam/, New York Post (January 11, 2015). New York Post

War, People, World, Dreams

“Funny thing about those Middle Ages,” said Joseph. “They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they’re in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there’s an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can’t deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 17 (pp. 192-193)

Hate, People, Age, Law

“The great error of the last 50 years is that conservatives think that they should unthinkingly endorse laissez -faire economics, but as presently conceived the free market destroys most of the things conservatives value; it destroys traditions, family life, societies, cultures, and established ways of doing things. The market place, as understood by contemporary neo-liberalism, is something no genuine conservative should support or endorse.”

Phillip Blond (1966) British philosopher

Source: Den 11. time, Third season, programme 96, 3 March 2008, DR2 Source: Interview with Philip Blond http://www.dr.dk/Forms/Published/PlaylistGen.aspx?qid=616842&amp;odp=true&amp;bitrate=low&location=Lyngby&uri=http://www.dr.dk/Forms/Published/PlaylistGen.aspx, Den 11. time, DR2, 3 March 2008, Windows Media file, 28 min. (in English with Danish subtitles)

Life, Family, Way, Error

“Living, just by itself - what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

32
Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Life, Business, Time

“Well let me tell you something, I can't be nobody but myself. Ya know what I'm saying? The thing that makes the world love Flav is Flav being himself. So honestly man, to tell you the truth: it was not hard to be myself. It was real easy.”

Flavor Flav (1959) American rapper

[Casey, Cisneros, http://media.www.collegian.com/media/storage/paper864/news/2005/01/27/VervetheDishLive/Flavor.Flav.Interview-1705943.shtml, Flavor Flav interview, The Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University, 27 January 2005, 2008-03-05]

Love, Truth, World

“Care is a state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), p. 289

“If you can approach shooting as something to be enjoyed, not a frustrating obsession, it can enrich your life.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

The Upland Shooting Life (1971)

Life

“Punk: [after hearing John Laurinaitis propose a WWE Championship match at Survivor Series against Alberto Del Rio] Okay, pardon me for not being all smiles, that's exactly what I want, but… what's the catch? You gonna make it a handicap match, or is Ricardo Rodriguez the special guest referee? No, are you gonna be the special guest ring announcer with your majestic voice?
Laurinaitis: Punk, there's only one thing you have to do.
Punk: There's one thing I have to do… for you. I have to do something for you to get a title shot? Let me guess—I gotta re-grip your skateboard, you need new ball bearings?
Laurinaitis: You know what, Punk? I know you don't like me, okay? And that's okay. I'm not playing the part of Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, I am the Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and the General Manager of Raw. So in order for me to make it official, you need to tell me in front of the WWE Universe that you respect me. Tell me that you respect me.
Punk: Are you Aretha Franklin? You want me to tell these people I respect you when I know clearly that you don't respect me 'cause I don't wear a bourgeois suit and I don't tow the company line? You wanna talk about respect? Respect, Johnny, is earned, it isn't just given. And you're gonna come out here and say that when you're in charge, this place… this place is just oh so run like a tight ship. Have you watched the product? We've got rings collapsing, you got Kevin Nash interfering in every other match of mine; this place isn't any better with you in charge. How's that for respect?
Laurinaitis: Punk, you're about to make a big mistake. Okay, swallow your pride, stand up like a man, and tell me that you respect me.
Punk: Okay. All right. Don't get hot. [Imitating Laurinaitis] I respect you, Funk-man. That all right? Was that good enough?
Laurinaitis: I tell you what, Punk. You've got one more chance to show me and tell me you respect me, and I mean it.
Punk: Okay, Mr. Laurinaitis, sir, Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and interim Raw General Manager. I respect you. I respect the fact that each week, you come out here in front of the millions of fans in the WWE Universe, live on the USA Network, with this awesome, completely lost deer-in-the-headlights look on your face; I respect the fact that you don't know how close to hold the microphone to your mouth when you speak; I respect the fact that you used to compete in this ring with your awesome Kentucky waterfall mullet, and you were never any good, but you somehow still ascended to the top of the WWE corporate structure, showing the world new-found levels of brown-nosery; but above all, I respect the fact that never before in this business has somebody with so little done so much! I respect you! How's that sound?! Does that sound good enough for you?!”

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

October 24, 2011
WWE Raw

People, World, Smile, Business

“They say everything in the world is good for something.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Act III, scene 2.
The Spanish Friar (1681)

World

“Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society, Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal

Fate, World

“In a way, underdevelopment is a paradox. Many parts of the world that are naturally rich are actually poor and parts that are not so well off in wealth of soil and sub-soil are enjoying the highest standards of living. When the capitalists from the developed parts of the world try to explain this paradox, they often make it sound as though there is something “God given” about the situation.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 35.

God, World, Way, Nature

“Something is wrong with America. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about or if they're thinking at all.”

Bob Dole (1923) American politician

Reported in Tom Crisp, The Book of Bob: Choice Words, Memorable Men (2007), p. 113.

People, Thinking

“If in our life and spiritual experience we have become accustomed to transcending our particular individuality, thus realising more clearly in our faith the universal and liberating value of this act, free from any objectivistic idolatry and if we centre down in our soul, in the reality of all things and all persons, then our meeting with death will be more serene, because already in our life we will have overcome the feeling of our limits as something terrible, insuperable and absolute. Absolute instead will be the act performed in the self, the celebration of God’s presence.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Life, Death, God, Faith

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Men, People, World, Hope

“What if a sense of humour is like hair — something a lot of man lose as they get older?”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

How to Be Good (2001)

Sense

“This law, by and large, extends the same kind of crime-fighting tools we apply to gangs and mobsters to terrorists. That's not something that is an infringement of our civil liberties.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

2004-01-20
State delegation split on speech
Craig
Gilbert
Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=201475
2012-09-30
http://web.archive.org/web/20080116205008/http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=201475
2008-01-16
discussing the USA PATRIOT Act

Law, Fight

“The systems advocated by professed upholders of laissez-faire are in reality permeated with coercive restrictions of individual freedom…. What is the government doing when it “protects a property right”? Passively, it is abstaining from interference with the owner when he deals with the thing owned; actively, it is forcing the non-owner to desist from handling it, unless the owner consents. Yet Mr. Carver would have it that the government is merely preventing the non-owner from using force against the owner. This explanation is obviously at variance with the facts—for the non-owner is forbidden to handle the owner's property even where his handling of it involves no violence or force whatever…. In protecting property the government is doing something quite apart from merely keeping the peace. It is exerting coercion wherever that is necessary to protect each owner, not merely from violence, but also from peaceful infringement of his sole right to enjoy the thing owned.”

Robert Lee Hale (1884–1969) American lawyer and economist

“Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Sep., 1923), pp. 470-494

Peace, Reality, Freedom

“Deep in the heart of both critical Christian and alienated Jew, there is … a feeling, not even a feeling, a shadow of a notion, nothing more substantial than the pointless but compelling impulse to knock on wood when one talks of the health of children—something that says there is more to Jews than meets the eye.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life (1959)

Children, Health, Feeling, Heart

“It is pointed out convincingly by George Sarton in The Life of Science that the development of science, as contrasted with that of art, is cumulative and progressive. Every scientist is educated in the current knowledge of his age and, making use of all he has learned, attempts to add something of his own to the existing body of knowledge. For this reason it is essentially impossible to isolate his personal achievements from the total pattern of scientific development. It follows that one cannot write the scientific life story of an isolated scholar, but only the history of the branches of science in which he participated.”

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965) Dutch historian

p 14
Simon Stevin: Science in the Netherlands around 1600, 1970

Life, Age, Education, Art

“He was keeping track of time. It was nearly two hours since he had last looked at his watch, but he knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service. When you're waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach house in winter and you let your mind lock onto the steady pace of the passing seconds. It's like suspended animation. It saves energy and it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your unconscious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes a huge black space for thinking in. But it keeps you just awake enough to be reach for whatever you need to be ready for. And it means you always know what time it is.”

Lee Child book Die Trying

Die Trying.

Thinking, Winter, Time, Waiting

“I'm a — I'm a, um, a godmother which is just, that's fun to be a godmother, she is so precious, she's the light of my life, she's two… or five or something, and she's, uh… I don't know, I've never seen her — the pictures are precious, she just seems so, y'know… She lives clear across town, I don't have that kind of time, but, um… Well, I send money and stuff, it's not like I don't have a connection….”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Taste This

Life, Money, Light, Time

“My problem was that I felt ashamed of feeling sad or angry. Now, I don't hide my vulnerability in my lyrics. There's no way I was going to get raped and not get something out of it. I learned about power and hope and forgiveness. I like who I am now and I wouldn't be who I am if that hadn't happened.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

ELLE, "Fiona Apple is NOT the next Alanis, thank you" October [1996]

Sadness, Hope, Way, Feeling

“It’s quite an obsession to me to communicate at this moment, at this time, with my audience. I don’t only play for them, it’s something I want to give back to them. I feel how each listener in the audience is listening to me, and I feel its warmness, for example, and I give it back to the complete audience. I feel the intensity of hearing, of listening. This is like electricity, and this I give back to the audience. It’s very stimulating.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on the audience and studio recordings

Feeling, Communication, Time

“Above all, most Irish nationalists entertain the fiction of Irish exceptionalism, the false conviction that Ireland suffered more under British colonialism than any other comparable people. Let me be clear. I am not saying something nasty did not happen in the historical woodshed. What I am saying is that what happened was neither as nasty as we believe, nor did it last as long as we believe, nor was it all the work of some beastly British soldier passing by.”

Eoghan Harris (1943) Irish journalist

The crazy knot that binds us to Britain, Eoghan Harris, Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/the-crazy-knot-that-binds-us-to-britain-466689.html,

People, Suffering, Falseness

“I have heard
the big music
and I'll never be the same
something so pure
just called my name.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Big Music"
This Is the Sea (1985)

Music

“"Tolerance" is not only the acceptance that people, as diverse they may be, have the right to be as they are and to live in peace together. Tolerance — in the context of business — is also the recognition that to get what you want, you have to give something in return.”

Begum Aga Khan (1963) German philanthropist

International Business and Leadership Symposium address

People, Peace, Business

“they [her two shows in 2009] are so different, and actually it was a lot of work to make those two shows – I have never done that, two shows simultaneously. I worked on them for a whole year. It was very hard, because I was trying to get this balance between minimalism and something else beyond that – in dialogue with Minimalism, but with content. That was always the thing with minimalism, there was no content allowed of course, but only the thing in the space, that was what Sol LeWitt was always about, and Carl Andre – it was all about avoiding content. I was always very interested in this, right from the beginning, especially with my 'Ellipsoids' [she made 1981 - 1983]. They look like minimalism, but in the end there is a lot going on there.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

“I was shocked to my marrow the very first time I heard the Church is saying a man can marry a man. What? It is from that shock, that surprise, how is that possible? Is it a kind of experiment or something? They are sick or tired of normal heterosexual relationships? How could that be?”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Interview in The Times, 5 July 2007

Time

“There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness… is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase ‘’the pursuit of happiness'’ is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

On BBC's Woman's Hour (5th October 1965)

Happiness, People, World, Question

“He's now trying to make social comment, this is the guy who hid who he actually was from the public for 20 years. Now, all of a sudden, he's got something to say about the way of the world. I find it laughable. That's even before you get to the song, which is diabolical.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Noel Gallagher cited in " Gallagher attacks 'liar' Michael http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2115582.stm" at news.bbc.co.uk, 8 July 2002. Remarks on George Michael's song "Shoot the Dog." Controversy with other artists

World, Way, Guy

“Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 7

Water, Animals

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov’d by death, and cou’d I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou’d be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic’d reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I am certain there is no such principle in me… But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 4, Section 6
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Love, Death, Pain, Hate

“Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009. Something vanished from that room, and no one could quite explain why. It was a bust of Winston Churchill – the great British war time leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years. But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington. No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision. Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender. Some said that perhaps Churchill was seen as less important than he once was. Perhaps his ideas were old-fashioned and out of date. Well, if that’s why Churchill was banished from the Oval Office, they could not have been more wrong.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

In a column for The Sun newspaper http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/7095695/UK-and-America-can-better-friends-than-ever-Mr-Obama-if-we-LEAVE-the-EU-says-Boris-Johnson.html, 22 April 2016. 2010s, 2016

War, Idea, Fashion, Decision

“Hosting the Oscars is like making love to a beautiful woman — it's something I only get to do when Billy Crystal's out of town.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Hosting the 2001 Academy Awards

Love, Making love, Beauty

“The greatest real thrill that life offers is to create, to construct, to develop something useful. Too often we fail to recognize and pay tribute to the creative spirit. It is that spirit that creates our jobs. There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan. quoted in: John Bourne (2000), Learning Effectiveness and Faculty Satisfaction. p. 11

Life, Courage

“The eye covers distances in a second. It lusts for freedom. Looking out, I often wanted to be free - not of home, but of the city. The eye (if it's gazing upon something it's unhappy with, as I was) might see nothing. Looking up is different. I have the freedom I then wanted.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Home, Freedom

“The best men are those who put their cards on the table when something is bothering them, and if possible do it quietly, not blaming anyone, and if they're faced with a hysterical partner, who is not herself, identify with what she feels even when they can't make head or tail out of what she says.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Men, Feeling

“To dwell upon the possibility of illness or disaster is equally poor policy, for you set up negative webs of probabilities that need not occur. You can theoretically alter your own past as YOU have known it, for time is no more something divorced from you than probabilities are. The past existed in multitudinous ways. You only experienced one probable past. By changing this past in your mind, now, in your present, you can change not only its nature but its effect, and not only upon yourself but upon others.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 566
Seth Speaks (1972)

Way, Nature, Change, Time

“Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginning-less, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Awareness and consciousness
Source: "I am That." P.29.

Sleep, Change, Parting

“"Why don't we change our clothes and watch TV or something over at your house?" He felt like hugging her. "I'll make us some coffee," he said joyfully. "Yuk," she said smiling and began to run for the old Perkins place, that beautiful, graceful run of hers that neither mud nor water could defeat.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Jesse Aarons and Leslie Burke (the last time they see each other)
Bridge to Terabithia (1977)

Smile, Beauty, Coffee, Water

“The question the multiculturalists in Britain and other European countries have to answer is this: are we a Western culture, or are we to become something else? It applies to Australia, Canada and the United States too. If we are to become something else, who is arrogating the decision to wipe out our cultural identity? Because if we take in enough people who either refuse or are unable quickly enough to assimilate to Western values, belief in those values will not survive.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

The Multicultural Experiment: Immigrants, Refugees and National Identity (2003)

People, Question, Decision, Country

“This Court, limited in function in accordance with that premise, does not serve its high purpose when it exceeds its authority, even to satisfy justified impatience with the slow workings of the political process. For when, in the name of constitutional interpretation, the Court adds something to the Constitution that was deliberately excluded from it, the Court, in reality, substitutes its view of what should be so for the amending process.”

John Marshall Harlan II (1899–1971) American judge and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1899-1971)

Dissenting in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 624-25 (1964).

Reality

“(…) To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor not-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the mind-body is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Death
Source: I am That, P.122.

Death, Time, Parting

“It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close…”

Hunter S. Thompson book The Great Shark Hunt

"Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls… (October 1973), also published in Gonzo Papers, Vol I : The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)
1970s

Children, World, Fear, Learning

“It didn’t feel, at that moment, like I was getting into something over my head. It never does, before you take the leap.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 2 (p. 20).

Feeling

“(during "Feel Good Hit of the Summer") I wanna tell you something. I'm never gonna give you up, I'm never gonna let you down. I'm never gonna run around and desert you.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Stage banter

Feeling, Summer

“You take after your dad, a high-functioning sociopath with an incurable organic personality disorder. It’s one of the special-sauce variety, the kind with a known genetic cause.
Your uncle Albert was something different, and worse: He was a man of faith.”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 22, “Toymaker: Happy Families” (p. 248)

Faith, Personality

“Decision, the moment of saying yes, is prompted by something deeper; recognition. I recognise you; I know you again, from a dream or another life, or perhaps even from a chance sighting in a café, years ago.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Weight (2005)

Life, Dreams, Decision, Chance

“It’s to me this evening something has to happen, to my body as in myth and metamorphosis, this old body to which nothing ever happened, or so little, which never met with anything, wished for anything, in its tarnished universe, except for the mirrors to shatter, the plane, the curved, the magnifying, the minifying, and to vanish in the havoc of its images.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The Calmative (1946)

Universe

“I have another feeling that in working with a canvas, and with something you picked up off the street and you work on it for three or four days or maybe a couple of weeks and then, all of a sudden, it is in another situation. Much later, you go to see somebody in California, and there it is. You know that you know everything about that painting, so much more than anybody else in that room. You know where you ran out of nails... At the time I did that early piece, I didn't know it was the lower right-hand corner that had the new element – that that part would grow and that other parts would relate more to the past.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Feeling, Time, Past, Parting

“We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2000s, The End of Faith (2004)

Literature

“He had never been sure but that there might be something to the doctrines he had preached as an evangelist. Perhaps God really had dictated every word of the Bible. Perhaps there really was a hell of burning sulphur. Perhaps the Holy Ghost really was hovering around watching him and reporting. But he knew with serenity that all of his New Thoughts, his theosophical utterances, were pure and uncontaminated bunk. No one could deny his theories because none of his theories meant anything. It did not matter what he said, so long as he kept them listening; and he enjoyed the buoyancy of power as he bespelled his classes with long, involved, fruity sentences rhapsodic as perfume advertisements.”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

God, Hell

“The farther West we drove [to California, Fall of 1963, with Gerard Malanga, Wynn Chamberlain, and Taylor Mead for an opening of Warhol's 'Liz & Elvis paintings' at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles], the more Pop everything looked on the highways. Suddenly we all felt like insiders because even though Pop was everywhere – that was the thing about it, most people still took it for granted, whereas we were dazzled by it – to us, it was the new Art. Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again. The moment you label something, you take a step – I mean, you can never go back again to seeing it unlabeled. We were seeing the future and we knew it for sure.... the mystery was gone, but the amazement was just starting.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

quote in 1963
Quote in Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987), selected by Neil Printz; as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467
1963 - 1967

People, Art, Angels, Way

“To have nothing to say and to say it in a tragic manner is not the same thing as having something to say.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Opus Posthumous (1955), Adagia

“Taking the knee' is like taking a pee. It's a waste. It speaks to the inward-looking, ego-driven, vain posturing of the Left and its perpetually seething, predatory racial coalition. They're bent on extracting something from innocent, ordinary Americans who owe them nothing.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" The Tribalism of Kneelism http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/29/the-tribalism-of-kneelism/," The Daily Caller, September 29, 2017. 2010s, 2017

“Fans hate a hypocrite. I believe they detect the real you behind every role and if they are led to believe you are something you pretend you aren't, they resent it.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

This is Really Irene Dunne, by Sara Hamilton http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/photoplay-april-1936/; Photoplay (April 1936).

Hate

“This past summer I realized that I am not the sort of woman to stand alone in life. Apart from the eternal worries about money, it is precisely the freedom I have had which was able to lure me away from myself. I would so much like to get to the point where I can create something that is me. It is up to the future to determine for us whether I'm acting bravely or not. The main thing now is peace and quiet for my work, and I have that most of all when I am at Otto Modersohn's side.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her friend Clara Rilke-Westhoff, 17 November 1906; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 206
1906 + 1907

Life, Money, Peace, Freedom

“There are certain moments in performance when I'm hand-in-glove with a conductor and feel I can take risks and try something completely different from what we did in rehearsal. Sometimes we pull it off, and it's magical. Other times you try to get creative, the support isn't there, and you think, oh well, maybe next time.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

JS online 1999 http://www2.jsonline.com/enter/performingarts/strini/jun99/chang03060299.asp

Feeling, Support, Thinking, Time

“I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030411-secdef0090.html

People, Food, Freedom, Water

“To conclude this personal note, I, William Joyce, will merely say that I left England because I would not fight for Jewry against the Führer and National Socialism, and because I believe most ardently, as I do today, that victory and a perpetuation of the old system would be an incomparably greater evil for [England] than defeat coupled with a possibility of building something new, something really national, something truly socialist.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Peter Martland, "Lord Haw Haw: The English voice of Nazi Germany" (The National Archives, 2003), p. 173. UK National Archives KV 2/245/285.
Broadcast, 2 April 1941. In this broadcast Joyce for the first time identified himself, in response to an article in the London Evening Standard which claimed he ran a spy ring in Britain.

Evil, Victory, Fight, Personality

“Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human.”

Joe Haldeman book Forever Peace

Source: Forever Peace (1997), p. 205

War, Nature

“There are tons of capable people in this country, and while I have been in this exploratory phase, yes, I have been considering who would I put in various roles, who do I consider to be some of the true patriots of this country that could help a Herman Cain cabinet if I were to run and to become president. And so yes, so far I have not come across or I don't have acquaintances with people who have professed the Muslim religion who are on a list of people I would consider. We are—we have become a nation of crises, Neil. And being politically correct is not something I'm going to spend a whole lot of time worrying about when we've got all of these other problems that we are facing right here in this country.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

Your World w/ Cavuto
Television
Fox News
2011-03-28, quoted in [Herman Cain Can't Find Any Qualified, Patriotic Muslims, 2011-03-28, Political Correction, Media Matters for America, http://politicalcorrection.org/video/201103280016, 2011-10-07]

People, Religion, Problem, Time

“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On the design of the iPod, as quoted in Newsweek (14 October 2006)
2000s

People, Problem, Time

“The upward thrust of evolution as part of the design becomes something to preserve and revere.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

Source: Science and the Problem of Values (1972), p. 128

Parting

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

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

Source: 1980s, Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), p. 58

People, Truth, Way, Thinking

“Practice does not mean that whatever you do, even lying down, is zazen. When the restrictions you have do not limit you, this is what we mean by practice….
When you sit, you will sit. When you eat, you will eat…. If you say,”It doesn’t matter,” it means that you are making some excuse to do something in your own way with your small mind. It means that you are to some particular thing or way. That is not what we mean when we say, “Just to sit is enough,” or “Whatever you do is zazen.””

Shunryu Suzuki book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Of course, everything you do is zazen, but if so, there is no need to say it.
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1973), p. 41

Way, Lying

“In one sense, this is a healthy response because it recognizes that race matters and racism matter, and and create different experiences for people in this country. But there is also something important to be said for solidarity…. It's important to say that solidarity is not charity. Historically, solidarity has meant the recognition that all our struggles are connected. In the socialist movement and the labor movement, there's the old saying that "." The point is to understand that when the majority of people are divided and standing up for one another, the chances of losing are much greater--but when we stand together, we have a better chance of winning.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (1950) American academic and author

The fight against racism doesn't stop here (2013)

People, Understanding, Sense, Chance

“I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Conversations with Eckermann (23 March 1829) - Often quoted as "Architecture is frozen music."

Music

“The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

As quoted in Philosophers of the Earth : Conversations with Ecologists (1972) by Anne Chisholm

People, Way, Democracy, Thinking

“There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.”

F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) British philosopher

No. 88.
Aphorisms (1930)

Truth

“There was something about such reflex stupidity that never failed to irritate him.”

Gregory Benford book Timescape

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 17 (p. 231)

Stupidity

“Kate Bush makes a record, and you don’t hear from her. And you play the stuff she has made, and one day you are surprised, and she brings out something else, and she's been quietly working away on it, for however long she wanted to work on it, and I love that. I love the willingness to be quiet, until its time to speak — which is something that she does over and over.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

The Kate Bush Story (2014)

Love, Time

“Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Pt. I, ch. 5
Confession (1882)

Search, Understanding, Question, Knowledge

“Kennaston could find in the past — even he, who was privileged to view the past in its actuality, rather than through the distorting media of books and national pride — no suggestion as to what, if anything, he was expected to do while his physical life lasted, or to what, if anything, this life was a prelude. Yet that to-day was only a dull overture to to-morrow seemed in mankind an instinctive belief. All life everywhere, as all people spent it, was in preparation for something that was to happen to-morrow.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 27 : Evolution of a Vestryman

Life, People, Books, Past

“Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?”

Paolo Bacigalupi book The Windup Girl

Source: The Windup Girl (2009), p. 247

Nature

“I care deeply about those who struggle to get by — but I believe the best thing to do is help them stand on their own two feet. And no, that’s not saying, "You're on your own," but, "We are on your side, helping you be all you can." And I believe in something for something; not something for nothing.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"The Scarlet Z, for Zombie (Reaganite)" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-scarlet-z-etc/ (15 August 2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National Review Online 2010s, 2014

Help

“It was something that came up right from the get-go, but as you know, from the beginning we kind of thought we were going to kill Shiro at one point. And so we’re like, ‘Y’know what? We don’t really want to kill off our gay representation. Maybe we’ll find it somewhere else.’ But then we found out pretty soon after that, Shiro wasn’t allowed to die. Well, all right, we go back to plan one and yeah, it just took us a little while to get to the point in the story where we were able to reveal it. But he was kind of always in the works to be our [gay] representation.
It’s a very normal part of his life and it’s just a very normal part of our story. It wasn’t supposed to be, like, scandalous or surprising or--
It’s just daily life. And I think we kind of try to envision a world where all of those things are just normal and accepted and people don’t freak out about them.
It doesn’t change who he is at all.”

Lauren Montgomery (1980) artist

26 July 2018 article on ScreenRant https://screenrant.com/voltron-shiro-gay-boyfriend-adam/

Life, People, World, Thinking

“Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily … None of it moved her. She addressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don’t love you.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

Love, Life, Happiness, World

“Thy pardon, Father, I beseech,
In this my prayer if I offend;
One something sees beyond his reach
From childhood to his journey’s end.
My wife, our little boy Aignan,
Have travelled even to Narbonne;
My grandchild has seen Perpignan;
And I — have not seen Carcassonne.”

Gustave Nadaud (1820–1893) songwriter

Stanza 5.
Carcassonne, (c. 1887; with translation by John Reuben Thompson)

Travel, Boy, Childhood

“Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

As quoted in Artifacts : An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley (2001) by Christine Finn. p. 90.
Date unknown

Business

“America is not doing so hot right now
I was hypnotized by the travel ban, the way, you know, a chicken gets hypnotized by something it's afraid of
I'm a very privileged person. And I am, like, completely documented. Everything's in order, and I'm educated. I speak English. I don't have that much to be afraid of. But whenever I run into one of these — and I'm not going to again, and that's amazing — whenever I ran into those issues, my heart would start pounding. I just felt really stressed out about it every time.”

Sarah Jeong (1988) Korean-American technology journalist

July 2017 interview by Vox https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/5/15905816/immigrant-trump-citizen-patriotism

Education, Way, Travel, Time

“The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Winston Churchill, in "The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", radio broadcast to the United States and to London (16 October 1938) http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/524-the-defence-of-freedom-and-peace. The 1930s

Truth, Freedom, Light, Time

“I became aware of Louise Bourgeois in my first or second year at Brighton Art College. One of my teachers, Stuart Morgan, curated a small retrospective of her work at the Serpentine, and both he and another teacher, Edward Allington, saw something in her, and me, and thought I should be aware of her. I thought the work was wonderful. It was her very early pieces, The Blind Leading the Blind, the wooden pieces and some of the later bronze works. Biographically, I don't really think she has influenced me, but I think there are similarities in our work. We have both used the home as a kind of kick-off point, as the space that starts the thoughts of a body of work. I eventually got to meet Louise in New York, soon after I made House. She asked to see me because she had seen a picture of House in the New York Times while she was ironing it one morning, so she said. She was wonderful and slightly kind of nutty; very interested and eccentric. She drew the whole time; it was very much a salon with me there as her audience, watching her. I remember her remarking that I was shorter than she was. I don't know if this was true but she was commenting on the physicality of making such big work and us being relatively small women. When you meet her you don't know what's true, because she makes things up. She has spun her web and drawn people in, and eaten a few people along the way.”

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) American and French sculptor

Rachel Whiteread, " Kisses for Spiderwoman http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/oct/14/art2," The Guardian, 14 Oct. 2007:

Women, People, Art, Way

“Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

1988 National Day Rally, when he discussed the leadership transition to Goh Chok Tong in 1990. As quoted in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume 2, The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
1980s

Feeling

“The moment you meet him you're like 'this dude's famous,' whether a million people know it or no one knows it. The first time I met him, when I was like 16, I was like, 'This is a dude I want to know.' He just has a magnetic personality. And I think there's something kind of cool about the front man of our band being the bassist who doesn't sing.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

On Pete Wentz
TV.com

People, Thinking, Singing, Time

“I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater, c. 1789; from: Francisco Zapater y Gomez : Goya; Noticias biograficas, Zaragoza, 1868, La Perse Verencia; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 182
1780s

Life, Dance, Painting, Personality

“Do I have to say something?”

Tarō Asō (1940) 92nd Prime Minister of Japan

Meeting with Barack Obama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSq0q-RrMMQ (February 2009).

“The most unfair things that could have happened in a society fell upon a blind man. This is something that no one can accept or explain away with any excuse. Everyone will ask: 'Do we actually have to exist in a society like this?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei Says Blind Dissident’s Escape Will Inspire Chinese, 2012

“This book is about three Frenchmen who lived and wrote against the grain of these three ages of irresponsibility. They were very different men and would have been surprised to think of themselves as a group, yet they have something rather distinctive in common. All three played an important role in the France of their lifetime but lived at a slightly awkward tangent to their contemporaries. For much of his adult life each was an object of dislike, suspicion, contempt, or hatred for many of his peers and contemporaries; only at the end of their long lives were Léon Blum and Raymond Aron, for quite different reasons, able to relax into the comfort of near-universal admiration, respect, and, in some quarters, adulation. Camus, who had experienced all three by the age of thirty-five, died twelve years later an insecure and much-maligned figure; it would be thirty years before his reputation would recover.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Introduction: The Misjudgment of Paris
The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (1998)

Life, Men, Books, Age

“I commenced the study of the Chinese language at the University of Munich. I had then about 3 years in Germany, engaged in various studies. Happening to notice the announcement of a course of lectures on the language of the Chinese by Professor Neumman, the interest I have always taken in the people, induced me to employ an otherwise vacant hour in learning something of their tongue.”

Thomas Taylor Meadows (1815–1868) British sinologist and diplomatic interpreter from Chinese

Page 7 of "The Chinese and their Rebellions, viewed in connection with their national philosophy, ethics, legislation and administration, to which is added An Essay on Civilization and its present state in the East and West" https://books.google.com/books?id=dKEBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR3&dq=The+Chinese+and+their+Rebellions,+viewed+in+connection+with+their+national+philosophy,+ethics,+legislation+and+administration,+to+which+is+added+An+Essay+on+Civilization+and+its+present+state+in+the+East+and+West&hl=en&sa=X&ei=x626UaDJKsnWyQHLmoG4BA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=The%20Chinese%20and%20their%20Rebellions%2C%20viewed%20in%20connection%20with%20their%20national%20philosophy%2C%20ethics%2C%20legislation%20and%20administration%2C%20to%20which%20is%20added%20An%20Essay%20on%20Civilization%20and%20its%20present%20state%20in%20the%20East%20and%20West&f=false

People, Study, Learning, Universe

“Religions which depend upon arguments are failures. A religion, to be aggressive, must be experimental; men must be something and do something by means of it, which would be otherwise impossible; then they become both rhetoric and logic — persuasion and proof.”

Charles Henry Fowler (1837–1908) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 137.

Men, Religion, Failure, Dependency

“You don't have to start a fight
I'm a man who can't say no
If you've got a little risky business
Just point me where you want to go
Take me to the power
Take me to the heat
Take me to the cleaners
If it's open to the street
Something's got to pay off
Something's got to break
Someone's got a fortune that they're begging
Me to take.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Easy Money.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

Business, Fight

“These aren't nerds. They're a bunch of interesting guys, and that's the problem with Revenge of the Nerds II. The movie doesn't have the nerve to be about real nerds. It hedges its bets. A nerd is not a nerd because he understands computers and wears a plastic pen protector in his shirt pocket. A nerd is a nerd because he brings a special lack of elegance to life. An absence of style. An inability to notice the feelings of other people. A nerd is a nerd from the inside out, which is something the nerds who made this movie will never understand.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/revenge-of-the-nerds-ii-nerds-in-paradise-1987 of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (13 July 1987) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Life, People, Guy, Feeling

“There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The Government listen too much to the pollsters and the party managers. The trouble is that they are not even very good at politics, and they are entering too much into policy decisions. As a result, there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power.”

Norman Lamont (1942) British politician

Far too many important decisions are made for 36 hours' publicity. Hansard, HC 6Ser vol 226 cols 284-5 (9 June 1993) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993-06-09/Debate-1.html. In his resignation speech to the House of Commons.

Way, Decision

“Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

II, 7
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book II

Learning, Time

“The shame love causes is like its pain; we only feel it once. We may feign it afterwards, but we do not feel it. However, the pleasure remains, and that is indeed something.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

La honte que cause l’amour est comme sa douleur: on ne l’éprouve qu’une fois. On peut encore la feindre après; mais on ne la sent plus. Cependant le plaisir reste, et c’est bien quelque chose. Letter 105: La Marquise de Merteuil to Cécile Volanges. Trans. Richard Aldington (1924). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_105 Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

Love, Pain, Pleasure, Feeling