Quotes about something
page 91

“Folk Psychology is faced with special difficulties here, since its conception of learning as the manipulation and storage of propositional attitudes founders on the fact that how to formulate, manipulate, and store a rich fabric of propositional attitudes is itself something that is learned, and is only one among many acquired cognitive skills. Folk Psychology would thus appear constitutionally incapable of even addressing the most basic mysteries.”

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

Source: Matter and Consciousness, 1984/1988/2013, p. 7

Learning, Appearance

“Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Of Fame.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

“Men are the dominant sign-using animals. Animals other than man do, of course, respond to certain things as signs of something else, but such signs do not attain the complexity and elaboration which is found in human speech, writing, art, testing devices, medical diagnosis, and signaling instruments. Science and signs are inseparably interconnected, since science both presents men with more reliable signs and embodies its results is systems of signs. Human civilization is dependent upon signs and systems of signs, and the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs - if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 1 (1971:17), Lead paragraph first chapter

Men, Art, Science, Animals

“I don't like that word 'finish'. When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while. I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out. Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to – because I like to change my mind so often. The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

quote of 1948
1942 - 1948
Source: Movements in art since 1945, Edward Lucie-Smith, Thames and Hudson 1975, p 32

Quotes, Change, Time, Painting

“Religious fundamentalists see themselves as having remedies for the maladies of the modern world. In reality they are symptoms of the disease they pretend to cure. They hope to recover the unreflective faith of traditional cultures, but this is a peculiarly modern fantasy. We cannot believe as we please; our beliefs are traces left by our unchosen lives. A view of the world is not something that can be conjured up as and when we please.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Against fundamentalism ― religious and scientific (p. 18)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World, Disease, Faith, Hope

“To exist means to be something, a thing, a feeling, a thought, an idea. All existence is particular. Only being is universal, in the sense that every being is compatible with every other being. Existences clash, being – never. Existence means becoming, change, birth and death, and birth again, while in being there is silent peace.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Existence
Source: "I am That." P.62-3.

Death, Peace, Feeling, Idea

“Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 173

“Every year the media comes up with something to describe my race … The first year it was "the comeback." Then it was the "the confirmation." I don't know what it was last year. This year, for me, it's "the year of the team." I can't say how I compare to the rider I was in 1999 or 2000 or 2001, but this team is much stronger than it has ever been. It has made it easier for me.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

As quoted in "King of the Hill" by Kelli Anderson in Sports Illustrated (5 August 2002)

“If I had omitted setting down something of that which has appeared to me as clear, so that the knowledge would perish when I perish, as is inevitable, I should have considered that conduct as extremely cowardly with regard to you and everyone who is perplexed.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Introduction
Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III

Knowledge, Appearance

“Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economics and policy. When you find a good or service that is in huge demand but the supply is so limited to the point that the price goes up and up, look for the regulation that is causing it. This applies regardless of the sector, whether transportation, gas, education, food, beer, or daycare. There is something in the way that is preventing the market from working as it should. If you look carefully enough, you will find the hand of the state making the mess in question.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Education, Food, Way, Beer

“I have something to offer, and through which you can realize something, realize the essence of this life. Even if you are a billionaire, you have to have one thing going for you, and that’s life. That is a key ingredient. You don’t have life going for you, you can have everything else going for you, and it won't make any difference.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Washington, DC, USA, November 24, 1981
1980s

Life

“The work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be, it was how you got a productive economy.
But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power, but of story. If their employees came home with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing.
The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story…had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure?”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Erasmas theorizing why others are joining his journey, Part 7, "Feral"
Anathem (2008)

Money, People, Religion, Feeling

“I've found that at times that question and the dubiousness that I seem to exude has given people something — not simply gossip or whether God is going to smite them for liking our band, but actually they've found strength and become more comfortable with who they are as a person. It's pansexual, that sort of reach. It's a wonderful side effect of what we're doing, to give someone the strength to come out of the closet to their family, or simply present themselves aesthetically in a way they feel happy with, whether or not their friends are going to be allowed to like them anymore. So it's actually a really cool side effect to all the rumors.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Being asked about his orientation. SFGate, June 11, 2006 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:T0a5NuTLJPUJ:articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-11/entertainment/17297619_1_green-day-decemberunderground-miss-murder/2&hl=en&strip=1

God, Happiness, People, Family

“When Sinatra sits to dine, his trusted friends are close; and no matter where he is, no matter how elegant the place may be, there is something of the neighborhood showing because Sinatra, no matter how far he has come, is still something of the boy from the neighborhood — only now he can take his neighborhood with him.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Boy

“Fears to look bad in front of other people, to say something wrong, to be laughed at - all those fears deprive us of half of our abilities. This is one of the main school problems. That teacher understands it, who can teach students to study without fear of the teacher, without fear of classmates, and, the most important, without fear of a subject.”

Simon Soloveychik (1930–1996) Russia writer and philosopher

Source: The Last Book (1999), Ch.20 (In Russian, Последняя книга,1999, ISBN 5-8246-0030-9

People, Fear, School, Understanding

“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.
As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been preempted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder has evolved into a storm — a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else — even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” or “You’ll pull out of it” or “We all have bad days.””

William Styron book Darkness Visible

The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), IV

People, Disease, School, Way

“When it comes to the Middle East, Trump again has the advantage of being an unknown quantity. Although he has talked a lot of nonsense about foreign policy, he has also insisted on a valid point: the current US policy simply doesn’t work. That, in turn, might persuade him to look for something different, creating at least an opportunity for repairing some of the damage done by Obama’s wayward policies to peace and stability in the Middle East. Clinton, in contrast, already has a record. She backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt before Obama decided to ditch them. She was co-pilot in Obama’s disastrous policy in Libya. On the perennial Arab-Israeli conflict, she did the hoola dance choreographed by Obama, going round and round and getting nowhere. Clinton was also in the driving seat when the US launched secret talks in Oman with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a textbook example of diplomatic chicanery that led to the great swindle known as “the Iran Nuclear deal.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Clinton or Trump – Better or Less Bad? http://english.aawsat.com/2016/11/article55361471/opinion-clinton-trump-better-less-bad, Ashraq Al-Awsat (November 4, 2016)

Secret, Peace, Dance

“.. but also for the person who is visiting Paris later in his life for the very first time, something unusual will happen.... then there appears for the man of age a light - a light in which he sees the dreamy images of his life transforming into more tangible and more solid forms. Because that city has created our modern culture, and the movements of life in most countries are just a reflex of those which are starting in France's capital.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Maar ook voor hem die Parijs op latere leeftijd voor het eerst betreedt, gebeurt er iets ongewoons in zijn leven.. ..er gaat voor de mensch van leeftijd een licht op, een licht waarin hij de droomgestalten van zijn leven tot meer tastbare vastere vormen ziet verwezenlijkt. Want die stad heeft onze moderne cultuur geschapen en de bewegingen van het leven in de meeste landen een reflex van die, welke in Frankrijks hoofdstad een aanvang nemen.
Quote of Breitner, after 1884 (when he visited Paris); as cited by Frans Erens, in Vervlogen jaren; De Arbeiderspers, Zwolle 1958, p. 98
undated quotes

Life, Age, Light, Appearance

“We are now in the middle of a long process of transition in the nature of the image which man has of himself and his environment. Primitive men, and to a large extent also men of the early civilizations, imagined themselves to be living on a virtually illimitable plane. There was almost always somewhere beyond the known limits of human habitation, and over a very large part of the time that man has been on earth, there has been something like a frontier…
Gradually, however, man has been accustoming himself to the notion of the spherical earth and a closed sphere of human activity. A few unusual spirits among the ancient Greeks perceived that the earth was a sphere. It was only with the circumnavigations and the geographical explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, that the fact that the earth was a sphere became at all widely known and accepted. Even in the thirteenth century, the commonest map was Mercator's projection, which visualizes the earth as an illimitable cylinder, essentially a plane wrapped around the globe, and it was not until the Second World War and the development of the air age that the global nature of tile planet really entered the popular imagination. Even now we are very far from having made the moral, political, and psychological adjustments which are implied in this transition from the illimitable plane to the closed sphere.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, 1966, p. 3

Men, War, Age, World

“I think today 'beautiful', which is always a tricky word, but now it's become an incendiary word, because in many ways today beauty is obsolete and not the main concern of art. And you can't prove beauty, it's there as a fact.... and you know it, and you feel it, and it's real. But you can't say to somebody.. this has it. I might be able to say it and others might recognize it. But it gives no specific message, other than itself, which in turn should be able to move you in to some sort of truth and insight, and something beyond art. I mean initially it's pleasure that grows. But it isn't just the shock of a message that you can have and dismiss. Once you've had it, it's over.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote in 1993 from: 'Helen Frankenthaler interviewed by Charlie Rose', April 12, 1993, at 40:02 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3385833841734265950# 1990s - 2000s

Pleasure, Truth, Beauty, Art

“A lot of things were lucky," said Daddy, and suddenly, while they were walking along, brought his hand down on John's shoulder and gave it a bit of a squeeze. "You'll be a seaman yet, my son." And John, for one dreadful moment, felt that something was going wrong with his eyes. A sort of wetness, and hotness… Partly salt… Pleased though he was, he found himself biting his lower lip pretty hard, and looking the other way.”

Arthur Ransome (1884–1967) English author and journalist

Way

“It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F154
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Effort, Learning, Indifference

“I feel that music is the art which can best express the emotions which flow within us. It conveys something bigger than it is.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

NAID '95 http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/scene.org/parties/1995/naid95/misc/dn-naid_089.txt

Art, Music, Feeling

“…something can be so much more than the parts it took to make it, and why people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Flipped (2001)

People, Feeling, Parting

“As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character. And that's what used to draw me to scripts – something in a woman that I wanted to defend, something that I recognized or wanted to understand, something that turned my head.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

As quoted in " Vera Farmiga interview: Chats 'Up in the Air' and her craft http://www.nj.com/entertainment/movies/index.ssf/2009/12/vera_farmiga_interview_chats_up_in_the_air_and_her_craft.html" by Stephen Whitty at NewJersey.com (December 7, 2009)

Understanding, Drawing

“The way I see it, if you declare something portable, you'll always be wrong, and if you declare it non-portable, you'll always be right.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199806232215.PAA02356@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Way

“Marjorie thought: It always comes down to something like this, doesn’t it. No matter what our consciences say, no matter how much doctrine we’ve been taught, no matter how many ethical considerations we’ve chewed and swallowed and tried to digest, it always comes down to us arming ourselves with weapons as deadly as we can manage and going out into combat…”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 377)

“There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.”

Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) Japanese writer

Book II, ch. 2.
The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

“Doing philosophy was an opportunity to learn something new. I expected this to be an adjunct to my practice of architecture. But it turned out the other way. It turned out that the philosophy of science gave me the opportunity to design social systems, and I was more interested in people-oriented systems than in buildings. They were both design, but different kinds of design. I like creating things.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff cited in: Carole Novak (2000) " Interview with Russell L. Ackoff http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_09/3ackoff.php". in: Technos Quartely. Fall 2000 Vol. 9 No. 3. This quote is the answer to the question, why Ackoff switched from architecture to philosophy in his graduate studies. 2000s

People, Way, Learning, Science

“Everybody keeps calling for Excellence — excellence not just in schooling, throughout society. But as soon as somebody or something stands out as Excellent, the other shout goes up: "Elitism!" And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. "Standing out" is undemocratic.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

"Schooling No Mystery," Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991)

School

“Warlocks are something like doctors, I guess. No matter how much you like them personally, there is quite a bit of nasty mess involved in their line of work.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 8, “Pallid Hounds A-Hunting” Section 1 (p. 100)

Personality

“I have just discovered something I have always known: we can no more escape from one another than we can escape from God.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Chantal, p. 112
La joie (Joy) 1929

God

“What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 2, "Basic Physics"; section 2-1, "Introduction"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

God, World, Imagination, Game

“Like all obsessions, Ballard's novel is occasionally boring and frequently ridiculous. The invariance of its intensity is not something the reviewer can easily suggest. Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different - a disused - part of the reader's brain. You finish the book with some bafflement and irritation. But this is only half the experience. You then sit around waiting for the novel to come and haunt you. And it does.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of The Day of Creation by J. G. Ballard, p. 109
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Books, Waiting, Parting

“Even the widespread resort to shifting cultivation with burning and light hoeing was not as childish as the first European colonialists supposed. That simple form of agriculture was based on a correct evaluation of the soil potential, which was not as great as initially appears from the heavy vegetation; and when the colonialists started upsetting the thin topsoil the result was disastrous. The above remarks show that when an outsider comes into a new ecological system, even if he is more skilled he does not necessarily function as effectively as those who have familiarized themselves with the environment over centuries; and the newcomer is likely to look more ridiculous if he is too arrogant to realize that he has something to learn from the “natives.””

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 63.

Light, Learning, Appearance

“What ends up happening with musicians and actors is, they're famous, so when somebody has an issue, it's something that gets talked about. People die of drug overdoses every day that nobody talks about. It's a shame that famous people get all the focus, because it then gets glorified a little bit, like, 'This person was too sensitive for the world,' and, 'A light twice as bright lives half as long,' and all that. Which is all bullshit. It's not true.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell talks about his latest reinvention, living in Florida, Tampa Bay Times, 9 June 2016 http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/music/rocker-is-in-tune-with-florida-life/2280927, Soundgarden Era

People, World, Light, Personality

“It’s bizarre and disgusting to see much of America’s media making excuses for a bloodthirsty, openly genocidal death cult. Something is deeply wrong with journalism in this country.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

January 6, 2009 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32367_Emerson-_Why_Does_The_New_York_Times_Love_Hamas&only

Death, Country

“Did you know babies are nauseated by the smell of a clean shirt? You put on something from the cleaners, they're gonna spit up just like that. My wardrobe looks like we have condors living in our yard. And if you play with 'em too hard, they'll spew like a can of beer. I like to shake my daughter up, then hand her to people I don't like. "Hold her just a minute, would you?"”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

You Might Be a Redneck If… (1993)

People, Beer, Baby, Daughters

“With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down.”

Daniel Handler book The Carnivorous Carnival

Lemony Snicket
The Carnivorous Carnival (2002)

Cry

“Lee wondered how Jefferson Davis had ever managed to inveigle him into accepting the Confederate Presidency. Even without counting the armed guards who surrounded the presidential residence on Shockoe Hill, he found himself a prisoner of his position. To do everything that needed doing, he should have been born triplets. The one of him available was not nearly enough; whenever he did anything, he felt guilty because he was neglecting something else.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 458

“That's what music is about, and those are the types of experiences I value most in looking for the visceral and unidentifiable thing it is that makes music music, and not something else.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

Music

“When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death.”

J. P. Donleavy book The Ginger Man

The Ginger Man (1955; New York: Delacorte Press, 1973) p. 45.

Death, Money, Health, Food

“Now one rather annoying thing about scholars is that they are always using Big Words that some of us can't understand…and one sometimes gets the impression that those intimidating words are there to keep us from understanding. That way, the scholars can appear Superior, and will not likely be suspected of Not Knowing Something. After all, from the scholarly point of view, it's practically a crime not to know everything.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Spelling Tuesday.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Way, Understanding, Appearance

“Most metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages. The verb tunatya contains in its idea of hope something of our words 'thought,' 'desire,' and 'cause,' which sometimes must be used to translate it.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) American linguist

Source: Language, thought and reality (1956), p. 61.

Hope, Idea

“This superficial blurring has something to do with the incapacity I have just mentioned. I can make no statement about reality clearer than my own relationship to reality; and this has a great deal to do with imprecision, uncertainty, transience, incompleteness, or whatever. But this doesn't explain the pictures. At best it explains what led to their being painted.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

in an interview with Rolf Schön, 1972; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Techniques' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5 1970's

Reality, Painting

“On natural selection: "Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance."”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 146

God, Intelligence, Nature, Universe

“Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n'est qu'une société, qu'un ménagement réciproque d'intérêts, et qu'un échange de bons offices; ce n'est enfin qu'un commerce où l'amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner.
Maxim 83.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Love, Friendship

“As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 4
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

School, Help, Cheating

“Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Orthodoxy (1884)

World, Intelligence

“ID (intelligent design) is essentially a total failure of the imagination; just because you do not see how something could have evolved, doesn’t mean that it didn’t.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 38)

Imagination, Intelligence, Failure

“Religion in terms of “personal experience is an independent functioning of the human mind, something unique, possessing and autonomous character. It is something inward and personal which unifies all values and organizes all experiences. It is the reaction to the whole of man to the whole of reality. It may be called spiritual life, as distinct from a merely intellectual or moral or aesthetic activity or a combination of them.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Life, Religion, Reality, Personality

“Nobody doubts that the Russians committed aggression, that Saddam Hussein committed aggression. We attribute to them rational goals, maybe they wanted to control the energy of the Middle East or something. With regard to ourselves, it's impossible… We just cannot adopt towards ourselves the same sane attitudes that we adopt easily, in fact reflexively, when others commit crimes… And if anyone says it, educated people, liberal intellectuals, are infuriated. Because it suggests that we could do something that's not noble. We can make mistakes, that's easy. You can criticize mistakes. You can criticize low-level crimes, like Abu-Ghraib, you can criticize that. You can criticize My Lai. But not the educated, civilized people, the kind of people we have dinner with, see at concerts, sitting in air-conditioned offices planning mass-murder. So that's beyond criticism. On the other hand, if it's half-crazed G. I. s in the field, uneducated, don't know who's going to shoot at them next, you can blame them, you can say how awful they are. You can criticize Lynndie England, disadvantaged young woman, very different from us. But how about the guys who organized and planned it? No.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2006, Discussion with Robert Trivers, 2006

People, Education, Guy

“We've become beings with souls… Something struggles within us. There are moments when something gets into us. Thoughts come to us which are not our own… People are our fathers! The voice that cries out that you want to live; the voice that complains; the voice that reasons; the voice that speaks of eternity — that is their voice!”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People, Soul

“The representation of an object, in itself (the objectivity as the aim of the representation), is something that has nothing to do with art, although the use of representation in a work of art does not rule out the possibility of its being of a high artistic order. For the Suprematist, therefore, the proper means is the one that provides the fullest expression of pure feeling and ignores the habitually accepted object. The object in itself is meaningless to him; and the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless. Feeling is the decisive factor.... and thus art arrives at non-objective representation – at Suprematism.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, 1927 in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 452
1921 - 1930

Art, Feeling, Idea, Decision

“But let the working man be on his guard against another danger. We live at a time when there is a disposition to think that the Government ought to do this and that and that the Government ought to do everything. There are things which the Government ought to do, I have no doubt. In former periods the Government have neglected much, and possibly even now they neglect something; but there is a danger on the other side. If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the opening of the Reading and Recreation Rooms erected by the Saltney Literary Institute at Saltney in Chesire (26 October 1889), as quoted in "Mr. Gladstone On The Working Classes" in The Times (28 October 1889), p. 8
1880s

People, Thinking, Learning, Time

“The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you. You're in a conversation and everybody's agreeing with what you're saying—even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don't want to hear.”

Robert De Niro (1943) American actor, director and producer

What I've Learned

People

“Here we go, surfing the Net again, something done by humans and very gullible fish.”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

Only Human (1999)

Fish

“Those who are placed in positions which demand the surrender of personality, which insist on strict conformity to definite political policies and opinions, must deteriorate, must become mechanical, must lose all capacity to give anything really vital. The world is full of such unfortunate cripples. Their dream is to “arrive,” no matter at what cost. If only we would stop to consider what it means to “arrive,” we would pity the unfortunate victim. Instead of that, we look to the artist, the poet, the writer, the dramatist and thinker who have “arrived,” as the final authority on all matters, whereas in reality their “arrival” is synonymous with mediocrity, with the denial and betrayal of what might in the beginning have meant something real and ideal. The “arrived” artists are dead souls upon the intellectual horizon. The uncompromising and daring spirits never “arrive.” Their life represents an endless battle with the stupidity and the dullness of their time. They must remain what Nietzsche calls “untimely,” because everything that strives for new form, new expression or new values, is always doomed to be untimely.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

Life, Stupidity, World, Dreams

“The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988)
General sources

Law

“Several fallacies have been accepted too freely recently about the position of our manufacturing industry in the balance of our economy. The biggest fallacy is the view that salvation lies in services, and only in services. The corollary to that is that it is inevitable and desirable that over the past two decades there has been a reduction of nearly 3 million in employment in manufacturing industry. That is a massive reduction and represents nearly 40 per cent. of the total in manufacturing industry over that time. I do not believe that that should have been the case. That has been precipitate and dangerous and it has not been associated with an increase in productivity which has led to our maintaining our relative manufacturing position…I have come increasingly to the view that the Government stand back too much from industry. In my experience, they do so more than any other Government in the European Community. They do so more than the United States Government. We have to remember the vast US defence involvement in industry. They certainly stand back more than do the Japanese Government. To some extent, the motive is the feeling that we have had an uncompetitive and rather complacent industry which must be exposed to the full blasts of competition, and if that means contracts, even Government contracts, going overseas, we should shrug our shoulders and say that the wind should be stimulating. That process has been carried much further in Britain than in any other comparable rival country. I am resolutely opposed to protectionism. I am sure that it diminishes the employment and wealth-creating capacity of the world as a whole. That would be the result of plunging back into that policy. I also believe, however, that this totally arm's-length approach in the relationship between Government and industry is something that no other comparable Government contemplate to the extent that we do. It is not producing good results for British industry and it is a recipe for a further decline in Britain's position in the Western world. The Government should examine it carefully and reverse it in several important respects.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/jul/07/future-of-manufacturing-industry in the House of Commons (7 July 1986). 1980s

World, Feeling, Communication, Motivation

“The arc of circling bodies is determined by the length of their tether, said the judge. Moons, coins, men. His hands moved as if he were pulling something from one fist in a series of elongations. Watch the coin, Davey, he said.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Men

“They’ve got a kind of committee there,” he had said, “an office. Acceptable Doctrine, it’s called. Everyone on the committee is mostly concerned about what people believe. They’re running things, too; don’t let them tell you they aren’t. Truth doesn’t enter in. If they’ve decided something is doctrine, they’ll ignore all evidence to the contrary and lie to your face. You don’t want to run afoul of those types, do you? Not if you have questions to ask. No.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 10 (p. 191)

People, Truth, Lie, Question

“.. on my travels, for example, abroad,.. I see things that attract me, in the works of others, - which impress me. That's what you reflect upon at times. And when you come home you think: Me too have to make something like that... Then you start, and when it's finished it looks like the work of that person or another... But your own originality doesn't get lost, - your sentiment remains!.. And this happens not only to me, - this happens to others also... Unintentionally you continue to build on motives of others..”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): ..op mijn reizen bijvoorbeeld, in het buitenland,. ..ik zie dingen die me aantrekken, in werken van anderen, - die me imponeeren. Daar denk-je dan eens over na. En als je dan thuiskomt denk-je: zoo iets moet ik toch óók eens maken.. .Dan begin-je eraan, en als 't klaar is lijkt het op het werk van dien of dien.. Maar je eigen originaliteit gaat tòch niet verloren, - je sentiment blijft!. ..En zo gaat het niet alleen met mij, - zoo gaat het ook met anderen.. .Je bouwt onwillekeurig voort op motieven van ànderen..
Quoted by N.H. Wolf, in 'Bij onze Nederlandsche kunstenaars. IV. - Jozef Israëls, Grootmeester der Nederlandsche Schilders', in Wereldkroniek, 8 Feb. 1902
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Travel, Home, Motivation, Thinking

“So the whole "We have a list and we're not telling you" should tell you something. Don't you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they'd just tell us and go, "nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!"”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds tells Microsoft to put up or shut up, 2007-05-16, Thomson, Iain, 2016-01-18 https://web.archive.org/web/20070520054734/http://www.pcw.co.uk/vnunet/news/2189971/torvalds-tells-microsoft-put, Said about Microsoft's claim that the Linux kernel infringes upon 42 of their patents. 2000s, 2007

Thinking

“Things can end badly, as they sometimes do in life. But if they do, then we know that something is wrong, just as we know it when a piece of music doesn’t resolve itself properly at the end. We know that. We just do. And so we prefer harmony.”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

Love Over Scotland, chapter 102.
The 44 Scotland Street series

Life, Music

“Here’s my definition of a hero. A hero is an ordinary person given being and action by something bigger than themselves. One thing I’m sure about is I’m real ordinary. Yet I’ve had the chance to touch the lives of a lotta people.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with The Financial Times — [Lucy Kellaway, w:Lucy Kellaway, Lunch with the FT: Werner Erhard, The Financial Times, April 28, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/feb214a8-8f88-11e1-98b1-00144feab49a.html#axzz1v4NTTdmJ]

People, Chance, Personality

“The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear. The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Drums of Morning, 1992

Study, Time, Reading

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Books, Color, Communication, Idea

“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance.... That pure chance could be so generous and so kind.... That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time.... That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful.... The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

Ann Druyan interviewed by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. — "Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe … and Carl Sagan" http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ann_druyan_talks_about_science_religion/. Skeptical Inquirer 27 (6). November–December 2003.

Life, Death, People, Family

“But just like voices, thoughts are underpinned by physical stuff. We know this because alterations to the brain change the kinds of thoughts we can think. In a state of deep sleep, there are no thoughts. When the brain transitions into dream sleep, there are unbidden, bizarre thoughts. During the day we enjoy our normal, well-accepted thoughts, which people enthusiastically modulate by spiking the chemical cocktails of the brain with alcohol, narcotics, cigarettes, coffee, or physical exercise. The state of the physical material determines the state of the thoughts. And the physical material is absolutely necessary for normal thinking to tick along. If you were to injure your pinkie in an accident you’d be distressed, but your conscious experience would be no different. By contrast, if you were to damage an equivalently sized piece of brain tissue, this might change your capacity to understand music, name animals, see colors, judge risk, make decisions, read signals from your body, or understand the concept of a mirror—thereby unmasking the strange, veiled workings of the machinery beneath. Our hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, comic instincts, great ideas, fetishes, senses of humor, and desires all emerge from this strange organ—and when the brain changes, so do we. So although it’s easy to intuit that thoughts don’t have a physical basis, that they are something like feathers on the wind, they in fact depend directly on the integrity of the enigmatic, three-pound mission control center.”

David Eagleman (1971) neuroscientist and author

Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain

People, Alcohol, Fear, Dreams

“The recent trend of the Bengali film industry is to remake South Indian films. My film had a mockery about that since I don’t believe in remakes. I won’t make a film which is a copy of something. I am very firm in my beliefs, even if that causes me to lose a few producers. There are many people who are making loads of remakes. But at the same time, there are many newcomers who have original ideas, working on new things, and getting producers. It is obviously a bright side of the shoel thing.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

Interview on Calcuttatube on Remakes http://calcuttatube.com/arin-paul-exclusive-interview/1608/

People, Idea, Time

“Lookit that,” he said. “A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That’s a miracle.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 12.

“I’m afraid I’m not a convert or anything. I still see the same blind cosmos governed by the same blind laws. But suddenly it matters. It matters terribly, and means something. What, I haven’t figured out yet. I probably never will. But I have a reason for living, or for dying if need be. Maybe that’s the whole purpose of life: purpose itself. I can’t say. But I expect to enjoy the world a lot more.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 15 (p. 129)

Life, World, Law

“Science is widely esteemed. Apparently it is a widely held belief that there is something special about science and its methods.”

Alan Chalmers book What Is This Thing Called Science?

Introduction, p. xix.
What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999)

Science

“My parents have lived in the United States since 1964 and they have never voted. They don't feel they have a right to. They don't feel this is their country. Even though they are citizens, they pay taxes, they watch the news and keep up with current events, they still don't feel comfortable enough with their American life to fully participate in it…Any attempt to argue is thwarted by dismissal…I guess he doesn't want to explain, because how can you explain something as intangible as invisibility?”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, INVISIBILITY

Life, Feeling, Parent, Country

“It was good to be back in the wilderness again, where everything seems as peace. I was alone - just me and the animals. It was a great feeling - free once more to plan and do as I pleased. Beyond was all around me. My dream was a dream no longer. I suppose I was here because this was something I had to do - not just dream about it but do it. I suppose too I was here to test myself - not that I had never done it before but this time it was to be a more thorough and lasting examination. What was I capable of that I didn't know yet? Could I truly enjoy my own company for an entire year? And was I equal to everything this wild land could throw at me? I had seen its moods in late spring, summer, and early fall but what about the winter? Would I love the isolation then, with its bone-stabbing cold, its ghostly silence? At age 51, I intended to find out.”

Richard Proenneke (1916–2003) American hermit

Alone in the Wilderness DVD, Bob Swerer Productions
Paraphrase by Sam Keith for One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey Dick's exact words are not known.

Love, Age, Peace, Dreams

“Pulpit. A Yorkshireman's instruction to pound something to paste.”

Norman Hunter (1899–1995) author

Professor Branestawm's Dictionary, Puffin, (1973)

Past

“For a samurai, a simple word is important no matter where he may be. By just one single word martial valor can be made apparent. In peaceful times words show one's bravery. In troubled times, too, one knows that by a single word his strength or cowardice can be seen. This single word is the flower of one's heart. It is not something said simply with one's mouth.
A warrior should not say something fainthearted even casually. He should set his mind to this beforehand. Even in trifling matters the depths of one's heart can be seen.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

Peace, Flowers, Time, Heart

“Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book II, Ch. 12
Attributed

Forgetting

“In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 110: cited by Eugène Tardieu, 'Interview with Paul Gauguin,' in L'Écho de Paris, (13 May 1895)

Childhood

“It was England in the autumn; the sun was, by definition, something that only happened when it wasn't cloudy or raining.”

Neil Gaiman book Anansi Boys

Source: Anansi Boys (2005), Ch. 9

Autumn, Sun

“[L]aws against Holocaust denial have done more harm than good. On a practical political level, I think that they give very intolerant mischief makers a cheap and easy way to pose as something more exalted than what they actually are, as sort of martyrs of free speech.”

Christopher Caldwell (1962) American political writer

Interview with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (2007)

Way, Thinking

“Cherry: …Yeah he’s gone anyhow, going into overtime. Gretzky, verge of elimination. So, what do we do? They say ‘What do we do? How about he [Doug Gilmour] gets hit with the puck? He gets hit with the puck, he’s laying on the [sic]'. The only way he’d get hit with the puck is if his chin was on the ice. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say about that. [Gretzky] gets the overtime winner and that’s wrong as far as I’m concerned. Andreychuk got a five-minute major, he [Gretzky] should’ve got something! At least a slap on the wrist or a dirty look!”

Don Cherry (1934) ice hockey coach, television commentator

On the May 29, 1993 edition of Coach's Corner discussing the alleged non-call by referee Kerry Fraser of a high-stick by Los Angeles Kings captain Wayne Gretzky on Toronto Maple Leafs forward Doug Gilmour in overtime of Game 6 of the 1993 Campbell Conference Final.

Way

“I think libertarianism does appeal to most people because that's how we lead our lives until the state gets involved. We lead our lives in voluntary interactions with other folks, and we follow what libertarians call the nonaggression axiom which means you're not supposed to initiate force against someone else except, of course, in defence of your own liberty or property. So that's something that's the Golden Rule, and that's something we can all relate to.”

Glenn Jacobs (1967) American professional wrestler and actor

9:44 P.M. This quote is effectively a condensed version of Alexander S. Peak's " Libertarianism: Ideology for the Common Man http://alexpeak.com/ww/2008/003.html" (15 January 2008), which also references libertarianism's appeal to the common person, voluntary interactions in society, libertarianism's prohibition on initiatory force, and the connection between libertarianism and the Golden Rule. Interviewed on The Independents (2014)

People, Thinking

“The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930)

Youth

“I passed by a corner office in which an employee was typing up a document relating to brand performance. … Something about her brought to mind a painting by Edward Hopper which I had seen several years before at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In New York Movie (1939), an usherette stands by the stairwell of an ornate pre-war theatre. Whereas the audience is sunk in semidarkness, she is bathed in a rich pool of yellow light. As often in Hopper’s work, her expression suggests that her thoughts have carried her elsewhere. She is beautiful and young, with carefully curled blond hair, and there are a touching fragility and an anxiety about her which elicit both care and desire. Despite her lowly job, she is the painting’s guardian of integrity and intelligence, the Cinderella of the cinema. Hopper seems to be delivering a subtle commentary on, and indictment of, the medium itself, implying that a technological invention associated with communal excitement has paradoxically succeeded in curtailing our concern for others. The painting’s power hangs on the juxtaposition of two ideas: first, that the woman is more interesting that the film, and second, that she is being ignored because of the film. In their haste to take their seats, the members of the audience have omitted to notice that they have in their midst a heroine more sympathetic and compelling than any character Hollywood could offer up. It is left to the painter, working in a quieter, more observant idiom, to rescue what the film has encouraged its viewers not to see.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), pp. 83-84.

War, Beauty, Art, Intelligence

“Daberlohn's diagnosis [about the etching she made as his portrait] holds encouragement for Charlotte…. Daberlohn (in his letter) 'In my opinion you are destined to create something above average.'
….'Above average.' She is elated by his letter and really feels quite proud… While beginning to paint the buttercup-strewn meadow where she happens to be sitting, she decides to make his prophecy come true and actually create something 'above average'.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

written text with brush, in her paintings JHM no. 4599 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004599/part/character/theme/keyword/M004599 + 4600 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004600/part/character/theme/keyword/M004600: in 'Life? or Theater..', p. 482-483 Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Feeling, Painting

“Art is not life, but in a sense something contrary to life, since life is transient and changing, while art is permanent.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 3, The Sensibility of the Sixties, p. 124

Life, Art, Sense, Change

“I would say that, whenever religion has rule over law, that madness will reign, with automatic violations of human rights, but maybe I'm being alarmist. What do they say? How can we know what sort of society they envision?.. We know that they are nearly all republicans, and that that party has been virtually assimilated by them, and we know they will speak more freely when they feel the safety of numbers. So let's look at the Republican Party platform of one of the red states, a very red state… Of course, they want to make pornography illegal (no surprises there), they also want to be able to filibuster the US senate again… Regarding the environment, they strongly support the immediate repeal and abolishment of the Endangered Species Act. Remember that these people don't believe in evolution, so they don't understand the importance of biodiversity and they don't care about the rights of animals either. They want to dominate and subdue the earth, just like their abominable doctrine demands, so they strongly oppose all efforts of environmental groups that stymie business interests, especially those of the oil and gas industry… Texas republicans not only want marriage to be restricted to one man and one woman (despite what the Bible says), but they insist it must be a natural man and a natural woman… So transgender people would be completely ostracized under the law should they get their way. There's no civil union options for gay couples either, because the platform also opposes the creation, recognition or benefits of partnerships outside marriage that are provided by some political subdivisions. As if that weren't enough, they also want to define the word "family" such that it excludes homosexual couples. They say they deplore sensitivity training (think about that for a moment), and they state very clearly that they want homosexuality condemned as unacceptable. They mean that very strongly too, so strongly in fact that they oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality as a reaction of religious faith. In fact, they go so far as to urge the immediate repeal of the hate crimes law specifically where that relates to sexual orientation… If you're uncertain whether that includes acts of violence, there at least two members of the current State Board of Education who implied that it should, and we know of a few Tea Partiers who insist that homosexuals should be executed, murdered by the state. I am alarmed at how popular this abominable sentiment is… Under the heading "supporting motherhood", they strongly support women who "choose" to devote their lives to their families and raising their children, but they implicitly object to women choosing other options such as college, careers, or not having children at all. A woman's ambition beyond the confines of the kitchen and obeisance to her husband is decried by conservatives as a deplorable assault on the family which, of course, they blame on liberals. Regarding the right to life, they say that all innocent human life must be respected and safeguarded from fertilization to natural death. Notice a few subtle caveats here: the qualifier of protecting only innocent life is how Texas republicans justify having executed more prisoners than any other state in the union, nearly five times as many as the next deadliest state in fact. Says something about Christian forgiveness, doesn't it!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Republican Theocracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjNg7nQvB0 (November 4, 2012)

Life, Death, Women, Hate

“I was now in my sixteenth year, and for the first time it occurred to me that, although conversant with most of the modern languages, I did not understand a word of Latin, and thought the knowledge of this language indispensable to my future prospects in life. I spoke to Rector Steffens, and got permission of my father to leave school entirely, and devote my whole time to the study of Latin. In less than twelve months I was completely master of a language which is often the torment of boys from their sixth to their twentieth years, and still remain ignorant of it. Since then I have written several pamphlets in Latin, which were admired; and in Gottingen my Discourses were generally delivered in that language. Doctor Taube, physician to the king, gave me lessons in natural history, botany, and anatomy; I bade farewell to philosophy and belles lettres, and began in earnest, and with great perseverance, to study physics; but still I was in bad odour amongst many of the learned, and it was said, when they heard of my progress, that henceforth they should not despair of making something of the most stupid of pupils.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Life, Stupidity, School, History

“Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 88

Learning, Forgetting

“Rather than programming children as if they were computers, parents should be something like art instructors. Because life is like a clump-of-clay, you can’t make it into an expression of beauty, unless you take it into your hands. While sprinkling their lives with painful and playful diversions, people wait their lives miserably into old age, for the skills to live-life, to–come as did life- itself.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Life, Pain, Children, People

“The point is not that contemporaneity is insignificant. … It is rather that there is something more important at stake in the temporal character of literature: its relation to history, understood as change and development, rather than as context and frame.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 14.

History, Literature, Change

“The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

Art, History, Strong

“A guy like Hando is abhorrent to me— the philosophy that governs his life is something that disgusts me completely— so that was an interesting learning experience.”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

On playing a neo-Nazi skinhead in one of his earliest roles.
GQ Interview (2005)

Life, Guy, Learning

“These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Said to Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA) regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As quoted in Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream http://books.google.com/books?id=HS9aAAAAYAAJ (1977), by Doris Kearns Goodwin, New York: New American Library, p. 155. Attributed

Way, Problem

“Many people dismiss haute couture as being something that is only for those who are very wealthy… simplicity, good taste, and grooming are the three fundamentals of good dressing and these do not cost money.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

As cited in: Alison Behnke (2012) The Little Black Dress and Zoot Suits, p. 18
The Little Dictionary of Fashion, 1954

Money, People

“David Brody: Radical Islam: to Evangelicals, this is a bread and butter issue. You said there's a Muslim problem in this country. What do you mean by that exactly?
Donald Trump: Bill O'Reilly asked me is there a Muslim problem? And I said absolutely, yes. In fact I went a step further. I said I didn't see Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center. It was very interesting. I thought that was going to be a controversial statement and somebody, I think it was Dennis Miller introduced me, he was doing like an analysis of me, he said, I love it. The guy said what the truth is. He didn't mince his words. He didn't say, 'Oh, gee, no there's not a Muslim problem, everybody's wonderful.' And by the way, many, many, most Muslims are wonderful people, but is there a Muslim problem? Look what's happening. Look what happened right here in my city with the World Trade Center and lots of other places. So I said it and I thought it was going to be very controversial but actually it was very well received. I think people want the truth. I think they're tired of politicians. They're tired of politically correct stuff. I mean I could have said, 'Oh absolutely not Bill, there's no Muslim problem, everything is wonderful, just forget about the World Trade Center.' But you have to speak the truth. We're so politically correct that this country is falling apart.
Brody: With some evangelicals there are some problems with the teachings of the Koran. Do you have concerns about the Koran?
Trump: Well, I'll tell you what. The Koran is very interesting. A lot of people say it teaches love and there is a very big group of people who really understand the Koran far better than I do. I'm certainly not an expert, to put it mildly. But there's something there that teaches some very negative vibe. I mean things are happening, when you look at people blowing up all over the streets that are in some of the countries over in the Middle East, just blowing up a super market with not even soldiers, just people, when 250 people die in a super market that are shopping, where people die in a store or in a street. There's a lot of hatred there that's some place. Now I don't know if that's from the Koran. I don't know if that's from some place else. But there's tremendous hatred out there that I've never seen anything like it. So, you have two views. You have the view that the Koran is all about love and then you have the view that the Koran is, that there's a lot of hate in the Koran.”

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

On CBN News' "The Brody File" (12 April 2011) ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWzDAvemJG8) ( transcript http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2011/04/12/brody-file-exclusive-donald-trump-says-something-in-koran-teaches.aspx) 2010s, 2011

Love, Hate, People, Truth

“Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.”

Erica Jong book Fear of Flying

Fear of Flying (1973)

Life

“Very often atheists themselves admit that they have no evidence of God's absence, but they try to put a different spin on it. They'll tell you, “No one can prove a universal negative” (like “There is no God”). They think this somehow excuses them from needing evidence against God's existence. But not only is it false that you can't prove a universal negative (all you have to do is show something is self-contradictory), but more importantly, this claim is really an admission that it's impossible to prove atheism! Atheism involves a universal negative, you can't prove a universal negative, therefore, atheism is unprovable. It turns out that it is the atheist who is believing a view for which there is and can be no evidence.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (2010), p. 149

God, Thinking, Universe, Falseness

Quotes about something page 91

Quotes about something
page 91