Quotes about sound
page 28

“As a monarch, Swati Tirunal was incredibly hardworking and supremely committed to his kingdom and people. Unfortunately, the dice in the game of life seemed to have been heavily loaded against him. The appointment of General Cullen as Resident sounded the death knell for the Maharaja.”

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma (1813–1846) Maharajah of Travencore

Lakshmi Devnath, in "The Monarch musician"
About Swathi Thirunal

Game, Life, Death, People

“Everybody knows him as the founder of the Indian Statistical Institute, the architect of the Second Five Year Plan, a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore and as one who had richly contributed to the social, cultural and intellectual life in Bengal. All those in the statistical profession were aware of his deep contributions to statistical theory, his efforts in providing a sound database to the Indian economy, and the part he played in placing India not far from the centre of the statistical map of the world. Those who have been closely associated with him have witnessed the indomitable courage and tenacity in fighting opposition for a good cause and clearing obstacles for propagating right principles.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

C. R. Rao in "Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in Vigyanprasar".

Courage, Fight, World, Life

“Ustad Bismillah Khan’s specialization lies in his ability to produce intricate sound patterns on the Shehnai, which was hitherto, considered impossible on this instrument.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

Raj Kumar in [Kumar, Raj, Essays on Indian Music, http://books.google.com/books?id=wwwX6DWfn3gC&pg=PA205, 1 January 2003, Discovery Publishing House, 978-81-7141-719-3, 205–]

“Along with the steady diet sitar, sarod, and tabla, several new instruments and players came to my attention. The first of these was Ustad Bismillah Khan, master of the sonorous double-reed instrument known as shehnai. This beautiful wind instrument, with finger holes and a bell-shaped opening at the bottom, sounded to me like a hybrid of soprano saxophone and oboe, and Bismillah Khan’s tone very much influenced what Coltrane and Terry Riley would do with the soprano sax. Primarily used at weddings, the shehnai had been rejected as a classical instrument until Bismillah Khan elevated it to a higher status among listeners. His unique fingertips and sublime breath control produced the necessary range of sounds for raga making shehnai one of the more popular instruments in North India.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

Peter Lavezzoli in his bo [Lavezzoli, Peter, The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, http://books.google.com/books?id=OSZKCXtx-wEC&pg=PA375, 24 April 2006, Continuum, 978-0-8264-1815-9, 32]

Beauty, Making love, Wedding

“As sound as what one might expect from the distinguished engineer who drew them up. He has shown the way to turn dire misfortune into a positive blessing. The proposals are without blemish. I strongly advocate carrying out the scheme.”

Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya (1860–1962) Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore

Allen, a well-known engineer in Madras service, while commenting on Visvesvaraya's schemes for Hyderabad as quoted in The Most Celebrated Indian Engineer:Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, 22 November 2013, Official web site of Government of India: Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/dream/feb2000/article1.htm,

Way

“John Cale is fantastic, and he made the sound of the Velvet Underground.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Jayne County, attributed without citation at About Cale, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/quote_others.html,

“Manikda was always different from the others. He did everything — from writing the script to choosing the location, finalizing the cast to designing sets and costumes, supervising make-up to framing the shots to editing. He was involved with each and every part of his film and was always very clear about what he wanted. His films were Indian but the production process was western. He also proved that silence can say a million words if used properly and was very economical with dialogues. He used barking of dogs, birdcalls, mechanical clatter or other natural sounds to brilliant effect. It was because of this detailing that every scene of his films became powerful and meaningful. And though he played so many roles behind the scenes, he accepted remuneration from the producer only for direction.”

Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) Indian author, poet, composer, lyricist, filmmaker

After working with Satyajit Ray, working in Bombay was confusing: Sharmila Tagore

Silence, Dogs, Nature, Making love

“Abjuring love? Real people don’t do that. Now you’re the one who sounds like someone on a stage. That’s not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter; I know you have foresworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable.”

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”
Part III, Chapter VIII (p. 299)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Box, People, Heart, World

“Temporal was the first recording that captured my true guitar sound (dinosaurs slipping and blocks of wire whittled with a feather).”

Shawn Lane (1963–2003) American musician

The mood of the world was different and yet music (sculpted time) always is there waiting to be manifested.
http://bardorecords.com/Bardo136.htm Press site for the album Temporal Analogues of Paradise (1995)

“Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Maeve Gilmore (his widow), Introduction to A Book of Nonsense, p. 10

“About Raja Rammohun Roy: There is no doubt that he was the first who held before us the ideal of freedom. He was the first to sound the note of freedom in every department of life and in every different culture that has met to-day in India. It may be that we have to modify that, it may we have to analyse that more carefully and more in details for the purpose of scientific study but it is enough for our purpose to say that he inaugurated many reforms – you might call that reforming activity. He inaugurated the reforms which again, in turn, gave rise to reaction which, again, gave rise to further reforms which made the nation turn on itself, till at last, it began to be self-conscious.”

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Speech delivered at Barisal on 14th October 1917. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
About others

Self-confidence, Life, Study, Freedom

“If we make any kind of decent, useful life for ourselves we have less need to run from it to those diminishing pleasures of the movies. When we go to the movies we want something good, something sustained, we don’t want to settle for just a bit of something, because we have other things to do. If life at home is more interesting, why go to the movies? And the theatres frequented by true moviegoers — those perennial displaced persons in each city, the loners and the losers — depress us. Listening to them — and they are often more audible than the sound track — as they cheer the cons and jeer the cops, we may still share their disaffection, but it’s not enough to keep us interested in cops and robbers. A little nose-thumbing isn’t enough. If we’ve grown up at the movies we know that good work is continuous not with the academic, respectable tradition but with the glimpses of something good in trash, but we want the subversive gesture carried to the domain of discovery. Trash has given us an appetite for art.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Home, Personality, Art, Pleasure

“It was the kind of collaboration I dream about actually. His voice sounded, you know, like an angel. Like a gift from God.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Gary Lucas – Guitarist from NBC Edgewise Tribute on MSNBC from 1997.

God, Angels, Dreams

“Many people in this world speak of peace from different angles. Some speak of peace as a result of good socio-economic policies, or as a result of a sound distribution of wealth. Prem speaks of peace from a perspective that is both original and intriguing. Rather than to look only to institutions or to policies for creating peace, he speaks of a peace that, he says, each person is personally responsible for finding. Despite ever-growing audiences, his message remains directed at each individual who comes to hear him and the people who enjoy his message come from all walks of life.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Dr. Pages, Chief Executive Officer Universal Forum of Cultures, Barcelona, Spain. June 14, 2004
About, 2000s

Peace, Personality, Wealth, People

“All my friends with PalmPilots and cell phones, they’re always calling themselves and leaving reminders to themselves about what’s about to happen. We leave Post-it notes for ourselves. We go to that shop in the mall, the one where they engrave whatever shit you want on a silver-plated box or a fountain pen, and we get a reminder for every special event that life goes by too fast for us to remember. We buy those picture frames where you record a message on a sound chip. We videotape everything! Oh, and now there’s those digital cameras, so we can all email around our photos — this century’s equivalent of the boring vacation slide show. We organize and reorganize. We record and archive.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (2004)

Life, Box, Photo

“This sounded promising, and my coefficient of cupidity jumped several points.”

Arthur C. Clarke book I Remember Babylon

I Remember Babylon, p. 705
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

“Christine would surely be talking, even if she had only an ape as audience. To her, any silence was as great a challenge as a blank canvas; it had to be filled with the sound of her own voice.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

An Ape About the House, p. 802
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Silence

“If we, the Muslims of Pakstan, with our distinct marks of nationality, are deluded into the proposed Indian Federation by friends or foes, we are reduced to a minority of one to four. It is this which sounds the death-knell of the Muslim nation in India for ever. To realise the full magnitude of this impending catastrophe, let us remind you that we thirty millions constitute about one-tenth of whole Muslim world. The total area of the five units comprising PAKSTAN, which are our homelands, is four times that of Italy, three times that of Germany and twice that of France; and our population seven times that of the Commonwealth of Australia, four times that of the Dominion of Canada, twice that of Spain, and equal to France and Italy considered individually.”

Choudhry Rahmat Ali book Pakistan Declaration

28 January 1933, quoted in Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever? (Pakistan Declaration)
Ideology of Pakistan

World, Death, Time

“Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: 'Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?' And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
"Good and Bad Reasons for Believing" [open letter to his daughter]
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Thinking, Time, People

“We went on the day on the boat train. I was 7, I had never seen a ship before. It looked very big. Everybody was very excited. We went down to the cabin and that's when my mother said to my father that she had made up her mind quite firmly that she would not go to bed in that ship. She would sit up at night. She decided that she wouldn't go to bed at night and she didn't!" I saw that ship sink, "I never closed my eyes. I didn't sleep at all. I saw it, I heard it, and nobody could possibly forget it." "I can remember the colours, the sounds, everything," she said. "The worst thing I can remember are the screams." "It seemed as if once everybody had gone, drowned, finished, the whole world was standing still. There was nothing, just this deathly, terrible silence in the dark night with the stars overhead." The band played one version of 'Nearer My God to Thee' of which there are three and the one they played was the one that was played in church."”

Eva Hart (1905–1996) Titanic survivor

"I never closed my eyes at all – I saw that ship sink. And I saw that ship break in half. Interview from 1993, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5J43Z9AWI, quoted in New York Times, 16 February 1996

Sleep, God, Night, Forgetting

“I feel very lucky to still feel like I’m full of ideas. I think sometimes being in the beginning or the middle of things is almost the best bit. This sounds terrible, because it sounds so ungrateful, but I’m never as excited by the aftermath of things: whether or not they are successful. It’s lovely if they are, obviously, but actually the really exciting bit is when it’s an idea in your head and you’re getting working on it.”

Tracey Thorn (1962) English singer and songwriter

On whether she feels creatively satisfied in “Tracey Thorn: ‘Not everything you do is cool’” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/27/tracey-thorn-another-planet-a-teenager-in-suburbia-interview in The Guardian (2020 Jan 27)

Success, Thinking, Idea, Love

“That sounds like post hoc realpolitik rationalizing bullshit.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 28 (p. 298)

“The child in her wanted to do as she pleased, cling to impossible hopes. The woman in her wanted to make sound decisions, succeed even if it meant sacrifice. The woman would win; that was inevitable. But the child would not go quietly.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Kingdom of Gods

Source: The Kingdom of Gods (2011), Chapter 7 (p. 173)

Making love, Hope, Decision

“With each new discovery of chemistry, physics, biology, the anthropological sciences, of the practical application of sound principles, dogma collapses. It is a part of that old edifice of religion which crumbles and falls in ruins.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

Science, Religion, Parting

“In his 1918 diary, Hermann Hesse recalled a dream in which he heard two distinct voices. The first told him to seek out forces to overcome suffering, to calm himself. It sounded like parents, school, Kant, the church fathers. But the second voice—which sounded farther off, like "primal cause"—said that suffering only hurts because you fear it, complain about it, flee it.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

School, Hurt, Dreams, Suffering

“Our ability to block our experience is an evolutionary dead end. Rather than experiencing and transforming pain, conflict, and fear, we often divert or dampen them with a kind of unwitting hypnosis. Over a lifetime, more and more stress accumulates. There is no release, and our consciousness narrows. The floodlight shrinks into the slender beam of a flashlight. We lose the vividness of colors, sensitivity to sounds, peripheral vision, sensitivity to others, emotional intensity. The spectrum of awareness becomes ever narrower.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

Fear, Pain, Color, Dead

“Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependence on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "_That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity_."”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of eternalization [sic] and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without vallies [sic], or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784)

Life, God, Pain, Dependency

“Even before we knew it was a coronavirus, I said it certainly sounds like a coronavirus-SARS type thing. As soon as it was identified, I called a meeting of top-level people and said, 'Let's start working on a vaccine right now.'”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Response to the 2020 coronavirus epidemic, reported in Denise Grady, "Not his first epidemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci sticks to the facts", The New York Times (March 15, 2020).

People

“There are many roads to tyranny. “Democratic socialism” is but the subtlest and most benign sounding road to communism.”

Trevor Loudon New Zealand politician

Will ‘Democratic Socialism’ Lead to Communism? https://www.theepochtimes.com/will-democratic-socialism-lead-to-communism_2777705.html

Communication

“We too often mistake individuals’ honor for race development and so are ready to substitute pretty accomplishments for sound sense and earnest purpose.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 29

Sense

“It was easy to sound that confident; less easy to believe it in his heart. They had got this far did not give them an automatic guarantee of success. The world did not work like that. It took pleasure in punishing the cocksure.”

Alastair Reynolds book Terminal World

Source: Terminal World (2010), Chapter 24 (p. 455)

Confidence, Success, Heart, Pleasure

“In other words, gurus generalize from their own experience. Some gurus are inclined to believe that all humanity should accept their vision: others allege that, when the last trump sounds, their own followers will be saved, whilst the majority of mankind will remain unredeemed. This apparently arrogant assumption is closely connected with certain features of personality displayed by a variety of gurus.”

Anthony Storr (1920–2001) English psychiatrist

Introduction (p. XII–XIII)
Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (1996, 1997)

Personality

“Through the sounding of the Word and through reflection upon its meaning, the Way is found.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Way

“Yes, I do love you, I have all the love in the world left for you, only that love seems so far away from me and so strange too, for it is as though I could almost hear it, a droning or weeping, but far, far away, and a sad lost sound, it might be either approaching or receding, I can’t tell which.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. VII (*p. 200)

World, Sadness, Making love, Love

“The I-breakdown, sweet, deep craved
You give it to me: already my throat is raw,
Already I hear the alien sound
Rebuilding unspoken images of my I.”

Gottfried Benn (1886–1956) German novelist, poet

Original: (de) Den Ich-zerfall, den süßen, tiefersehnten,
Den gibst Du mir: schon ist die Kehle rauh,
Schon ist der fremde Klang an unerwähnten
Gebilden meines Ichs am Unterbau.

"Cocaine" (1917)

“If the brutes have consciousness and no souls, then it is clear that, in them, consciousness is a direct function of material changes; while, if they possess immaterial subjects of consciousness, or souls, then, as consciousness is brought into existence only as the consequence of molecular motion of the brain, it follows that it is an indirect product of material changes. The soul stands related to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Soul, Relation ships, Change

“The Word of Ishvara is AUM (or OM). This is the Pranava.
II. The Sacred Word. This is the Word of Glory, the AUM. This is the Pranava, the sound of conscious Life itself as It is breathed forth into all forms...”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Life

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Life

“We are a short poem
in a endless emptiness page,
words are lighthouses
that ignites and struggle
to deliver light to the dark edges of the infinite,
and mystic sounds struggle to give voice
to the unlived beings,
to bore a young soul to the gate of birth.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and consciousness

Light, Soul, Birth

“Dialogue is always tricky. Authenticity is almost impossible, and you always end up sounding too olde worlde. What I do is to strip the words back, so I get the dialogue to sound timeless…”

Tracy Chevalier (1962) American writer

On how she composes character dialogue in “Tracy Chevalier: 'Slavery has to be raised until it's put to bed'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/17/tracy-chevalier-interview-last-runaway in The Guardian (2013 Mar 16)

World

“I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Essay: "Put a lid on it" - p.203
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004)

People

“It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle, because the actual mortality in hospitals, especially in those of large crowded cities, is very much higher than any calculation founded on the mortality of the same class of diseases among patients treated out of hospital would lead us to expect. The knowledge of this fact first induced me to examine into the influence exercised by hospital construction on the duration and death-rate of cases received into the wards; and it led me to lay before the Social Science Association a paper reprinted with the present title. Since the publication of the first edition of that paper, great advances have been made in the adoption of sound principles of hospital construction; and there are already a number of examples of new hospitals realizing all, or nearly all, the conditions required for the successful treatment of the sick and maimed poor.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Notes on Hospitals 3rd Edition (1863), Preface

Success, Knowledge, Exercises, Science

“...ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Gail Hightower's thoughts in Chapter 20
Light in August (1932)

Truth

“Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

Forgetting, People, Love, Fear

“"In Nigeria I'm not black…We don't do race in Nigeria. We do ethnicity a lot, but not race. My friends here don't really get it. Some of them sound like white Southerners from 1940. They say, 'Why are black people complaining about race? Racism doesn't exist!'”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

It's just not a part of their existence." On how views of race differ in Nigeria than the United States in “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘I Wanted To Claim My Own Name’” https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-novelist-ted-speaker-interview in Vogue (2015 Nov 3)

People

“The Body melts into the universe
The universe melts into the soundless voice
The sound melts into the all-shining light
And the light enters the bosom of infinite joy.
p36, Metaphysical Meditations”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Miscellaneous Quotes

Universe, Joy, Light

“Poetry shows up where language shows up – a mysterious supplement, to borrow or deform an old Derrida epithet, that we cannot do without, and that just might be the basis of the material world as we know it. Well, if not language as such, then sound…”

Ariana Reines (1982) American writer

On poetry in “INTERVIEW WITH ARIANA REINES” http://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-ariana-reines/ in The White Review (July 2019)

World

“I dreamed I was an animal
In a human world;
Now when I hear big sounds
I cry like a little girl. I'm talking about connections
Between here and there;
All things exist at once
Seems more than we can bear.”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"All Things (Mia ia io)" - Live performance at The Tin Angel, Philadelphia, PA (15 March 1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eACEYTQkoLA Warpaint (1991)

Girl, Dreams, Animals, Cry

“[F]orgive me if this sounds pompous, but it’s better to die standing up than live on your knees.”

Alexey Navalny (1976) Russian anti-corruption activist

Source: As quoted in "Net Impact: One man's cyber-crusade against Russian corruption" http://archive.is/FGqQE (4 April 2011), by Julia Ioffe, The New Yorker

“At such moments the voice of reason always sounds like blasphemy and dissenters are of the devil.”

Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer

Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 7, “John Proctor’s Jade” (p. 102)

“I come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

Music

“Turn where we may,—within,—around,—the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age,—now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears,—now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings,—now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved,—now, while the heart of England is still sound,—now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away,—now, in this your accepted time,—now in this your day of salvation,—take counsel, not of prejudice,—not of party spirit,—not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency,—but of history,—of reason,—of the ages which are past,—of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1831) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/mar/02/ministerial-plan-of-parliamentary-reform#column_1204 in favour of the Reform Bill 1830s

Home, God, Time, Law

“The real motivation of bein' a comedian is if you really love the sound of a laugh. And if you love that, you will never want to stop.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)

Motivation, Love, Making love

“I don’t have a job - I have a career. This may sound like semantics, (maybe it is) but to me a job is something you depend on from an employer. It’s theirs to give and theirs to take away... A career is something i have to be responsible for based on my reputation, my ability, and my preferences.”

Will Finn (1958) American animator

Why You Shouldn’t Want A Job In Animation http://willfinn.blogspot.com/2015/04/why-you-shouldnt-want-job-in-animation.html (April 1, 2015)

Dependency

“See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world, — dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown. Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain —
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Still Falls the Rain (1940)

Pain, Tree, Light, Heart

“We hallucinate sounds more often than sights. There are auditory mirages, which vanish without trace; auditory illusions that turn out to be something other than they seemed; and, of course, voices that speak to saints, seers, and psychotics, telling them how to act and what to believe.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 4 “Hearing” (p. 180)

“When I’m creating music, I don’t have an agenda for a sound or a genre or a message, I just want it to be truthful and representative of the lyrical content that means something to me, and the music that I love.”

Chris Carmack (1980) American actor and model

‘Nashville’ Star Chris Carmack on Introspective New EP: Ram Report https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/nashville-star-chris-carmack-on-introspective-new-ep-ram-report-188637/ (December 11, 2015)

Music, Truth, Love, Making love

“I think we should be snorkeling and swimming on reefs. Because I think people only develop a passion for protecting things if they know what is at risk. I would hardly be one to say that we shouldn’t go near them. That said, its important to manage tourism properly. If you have a lot of people going onto reefs, stepping on reefs, collecting things from reefs, breaking corals off, or throwing anchors on top of reefs, that’s not good. It’s important to properly manage the numbers of people and their behavior when they’re in water. It’s also important to make sure that the hotels that support that tourism have good water treatment for the sewage that they release, and that they aren’t also feeding this large population of visitors critically important reef fish. That is ecologically sound tourism. But you can’t just let it develop willy-nilly. It has to be managed carefully. Otherwise, you end up with lots of people and not much reef.”

Nancy Knowlton (1949) American biologist

Source: Nancy Knowlton https://web.archive.org/web/20081008104046/http://www.smithsonianmag.com:80/specialsections/ocean-hall/atm-qa-200809.html (September 2008)

Support, People, Water, Thinking

“Now I tell what is very strong magic. I woke in the midst of the night. When I woke, the fire had gone out and I was cold. It seemed to me that all around me there were whisperings and voices. I closed my eyes to shut them out. Some will say that I slept again, but I do not think that I slept. I could feel the spirits drawing my spirit out of my body as a fish is drawn on a line.
Why should I lie about it? I am a priest and the son of a priest. If there are spirits, as they say, in the small Dead Places near us, what spirits must there not be in that great Place of the Gods? And would not they wish to speak? After such long years? I know that I felt myself drawn as a fish is drawn on a line. I had stepped out of my body — I could see my body asleep in front of the cold fire, but it was not I. I was drawn to look out upon the city of the gods.
It should have been dark, for it was night, but it was not dark. Everywhere there were lights — lines of light — circles and blurs of light — ten thousand torches would not have been the same. The sky itself was alight — you could barely see the stars for the glow in the sky. I thought to myself "This is strong magic" and trembled. There was a roaring in my ears like the rushing of rivers. Then my eyes grew used to the light and my ears to the sound. I knew that I was seeing the city as it had been when the gods were alive.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God, Drawing, Night, Dead

“It is not given me to trace
The lovely laughter of that face,
Like a clear brook most full of light,
Or olives swaying on a height,
So silver they have wings, almost;
Like a great word once known and lost
And meaning all things. Nor her voice
A happy sound where larks rejoice,
Her body, that great loveliness,
The tender fashion of her dress,
I may not paint them.
These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

Tree, Painting, Love, Light

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a writer to psychoanalyze herself or try to explain why she writes what she writes—it’s a reductive way of looking at oneself and one’s work. Readers really participate in the writing of a book. As a writer I’m giving the reader signs to help create the story with me. The reader is bringing his or her own memories, intelligence, preconceptions, prejudices, likes, dislikes. So the characters in your copy of the book are going to look and sound different than in mine. I have my own ideas, but once the book is out there it’s not really mine anymore, and my own idea isn’t any more valid than yours. And then I begin the long process of disengaging.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

On how writers should avoid analyzing their own work in “Donna Tartt on The Goldfinch, Inspiration, and the Perils of Literary Fame” https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a29022016/donna-tartt-goldfinch-interview/ in Town & Country (2019 Sep 12)

Intelligence, Help, Thinking, Books

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Forgiveness, History, Strong, War

“You get a tax break for a racehorse, why in God's name couldn't we provide an $8,000 tax credit for everybody who has childcare costs? It would put 720 million women back in the workforce. It would increase the GDP, to sound like a wonk here, by about eight-tenths of one percent. It would grow the economy.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

17 September 2019
Biden vows tax credit will put '720 million women' back in workforce
Joseph Wulfsohn
Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-gaffe-put-720-million-women-in-workforce
2010s, 2019

God, Women

“No sooner was the Baltic open to our merchants, than corn was bought up there for importation into England; at the same time the continent was glutted with English goods, which, because the supply greatly exceeded the demand, were sold at less than their prime cost, and upon which the foreign governments soon laid new duties...to prevent the ruin of their own manufactures. This might have been a salutary lesson, if nations were ever rendered wise by experience; it might have taught us that, however willing one part of this nation might be to see the other ruined by the free admission of foreign grain, foreign governments would never consent to have their fabrics destroyed by the unrestricted introduction of British goods. It is a sound maxim in politics, whatever it may be in morals, that charity begins at home.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

'On the Corn-Laws', The Quarterly Review, Vol. LI. (March & June 1834), p. 231
1830s

Home, Time, Parting

“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know that the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal, and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart.The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured. Through civil war, the great depression, World War, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifices, and setbacks, our better angels have always prevailed. In each of these moments, enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward, and we can do that now.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

History, War, Victory, Angels

“For the truly creative mind in any field is no more than this — a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create — to create — to create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of beauty and meaning his very breath is cut off from him. He must create. He must pour out creation. By some strange unknown pressing inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"The Creative Mind at Work," William Vaughn Moody Foundation Lecture at the University of Chicago (1935), as quoted in Pearl S. Buck: A Biography, Volume 2 - Her Philosophy as Expressed in Her Letters (1971) by Theodore F. Harris, p. 217.

God, Beauty, Music, Joy

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within."”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.
The First Dive, p. 3
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Happiness, Time

“Of true benevolence, its charms divine,
With other motives to call forth its power,
And its grand triumphs, multiplied beyond
All former bounds, in this its golden age,
Humbly I sing, awed by the holy theme;
A theme exalted, though as yet unsung,
In beauty rich, of inspiration full,
And worthy of a nobler harp than that
From which heroic strains sublimely sound.”

Carlos Wilcox (1794–1827) American poet

Remains of the Rev. Carlos Wilcox: with a memoir of his life (1828), p. 99 https://archive.org/details/remainsofrevcarl00wilc/page/100/mode/2up Poetry

Motivation, Beauty, Singing, Age

“In the air sweet and dancing melodies of the sound, in life music is always the master.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Nell'aria dolci e danzanti melodie del suono, nella vita la musica fa sempre da padrona.
Source: prevale.net

Music, Life, Dance

“I turn my gaze to the sky, close my eyes creating a set of thoughts with my mind, embrace the feeling that my heart emanates... letting me live a sweet melody of sound inside me.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Rivolgo il mio sguardo al cielo, chiudo gli occhi creando con la mente un insieme di pensieri, abbraccio il sentimento che emana il mio cuore... lasciando vivere dentro me una dolce melodia del suono.
Source: prevale.net

Feeling, Heart

“When one listens to your speeches it sounds as if you had always fought against capitalism. The truth is that it was you who gave all the power to capitalism. In this republic capitalism has grown as it had never before. You can think about the old state as you will, one thing is certain: it was not as rotten as the one you brought about! …
What shall one say when Reich president Ebert in his letters addresses the Jewish scoundrel Barmat as "My dear Barmat" and closes with the greeting "Yours Ebert?"”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Despite all the veneration that I feel for this man, whom by the way I respect more as a master saddle-maker than as a Reich president, I simply have to be astonished. Gentlemen, where is the "beauty and dignity"?
01/23/1925, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)
Original: Wenn man Euch reden hört, dann habt Ihr immer den Kapitalismus bekämpft. In Wirklichkeit habt Ihr den Kapitalismus erst in den Sattel gehoben. In dieser Republik hat sich der Kapitalismus ausgewachsen wie niemals zuvor. Mag man über den alten Staat denken wir man will, eines steht fest: so verlumpt war er nicht wie der, den Ihr uns gebracht habt! …
Was soll man dazu sagen, wenn ein Reichspräsident Ebert den jüdischen Schurken Barmat in Briefen mit "Mein lieber Barmat" anredet und ihn am Schlusse mit "Dein Ebert" grüßt? Bei aller Ehrfurcht, die ich vor dem Mann habe, den ich übrigens als Sattlermeister weit mehr schätze denn als Reichspräsident, muss ich mich doch sehr wundern. Meine Herren, wo ist da "Schönheit und Würde"?

Truth, Thinking

“It's organized chaos. Everything is different. You have a sound check—a very thorough sound check—to make sure that everything is worked out so smoothly and then you're in glam, and then you have a small prayer before you hit the stage and it's it's a lot of fun. That's what it's all about. You want to come together and be thankful for having the privilege of getting to do what you love for work.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Interview to L'Officiel (2018)

Love, Making love

“The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Time, Appearance, Relation ships, Question

“It doesn’t matter if radio thinks it’s a dying genre, or if there are people who thinks it sounds like ‘this or this or that’. If you write a good song, and it’s pop-punk, people will like it; because pop-punk doesn’t really mean a whole lot: it just means that it’s got that pop catchiness to it, but it’s got that punk energy and speed, and stuff that makes you want to jump up and down or drive a car real fast; and that’s something that will never get old.”

Pierre Bouvier (1979) Canadian musician

Simple Plan: The 13th Floor Interview https://www.13thfloor.co.nz/simple-plan-the-13th-floor-interview/ (February 7, 2018)

Thinking, Cars, Making love, People

“The stories, they get misconstrued as the facts aren’t really facts and the fictions aren’t really fictions. Sometimes, the people telling the stories aren’t who they appear to be. Sometimes, the voices sound the same and you never really know where they’re coming from. And sometimes, the same person just keeps telling the same story, over and over until he’s sick in the head.”

Jason Tanamor (1975) Filipino-American Author and Writer

Source: Novels, Anonymous (2013), Chapter 19

Personality, Appearance, People

“True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Friendship, Health, Friendship, For Friend

“I am already seeing the crisis reformatting into some artistic statements, there will be plays, maybe films. Definitely theatrical performances. As strange as it sounds, I think that these difficult times have changed arts people, especially in theater and film, who were never fond of social subjects and always tried to keep their distance. And now they jumped right into it because of this difficult situation. And I think there will be only more of that.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

As quoted in "“Fostering Leadership”: online talk with Chulpan Khamatova" in Vladimir Potanin Foundation (7 August 2020) https://www.fondpotanin.ru/en/press/news/fostering-leadership-online-talk-with-chulpan-khamatova/

People, Change, Time, Art

“Free Trade in the sense in which we have always understood it is either a sound economic policy or it is not. Judging by results in national prosperity I should have thought it would take a lot of disproving, but the Tories are ready to play fast and lose with it and some of our own people who ought to know far better seem ready to back them up. If there is any future for the Liberal party it surely rests on the rock of Free Trade.”

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

Letter to John Lawrence Hammond (22 December 1931), quoted in The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911–1928, ed. Trevor Wilson (1970), p. 495

People, Future, Sense

“I didn't mean to make it sound like we don't want children. We don't, but I didn't mean to make it sound like that.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

The Comeback Kid (2015)

Children

“There was no readiness for soldiering in this truck, no stern and cocky welcoming of challenges. They sounded - oh, Mother of God - they sounded like children.”

Richard Yates A Good School

Source: Novels, A Good School (1978), p.165 (Ch.7)

God, Children

“You make interstellar politics sound a very dirty game.”

Isaac Asimov book The Currents of Space

“It is, but disapproving of dirt doesn’t remove it.”
Source: Empire novels (1950–1952), The Currents of Space (1952), Chapter 14 “The Renegade” (p. 141)

Game

“My idea of heaven is, eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

View ascribed by Smith to his friend Henry Luttrell; reported in Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), p. 236

Idea

“The sound of your voice animates the beating of my heart.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il suono della tua voce anima il battito del mio cuore.
Source: prevale.net

Heart, Animals

“Music enters the soul when the sound generates emotion.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La musica entra nell'anima nel momento in cui il suono genera emozione.
Source: prevale.net

Soul, Music

“When music is pure expression, the soul sculpts the sound.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Quando la musica è pura espressione, l'anima scolpisce il suono.
Source: prevale.net

Music, Soul

“The musical note is the language of intelligence. Intelligence speaks wherever there is poetry, music and song. Colour is part of it. We love colours because we come from colour. Colour and sound.”

J. Posadas (1912–1981) Argentine Trotskyist (1912-1981)

On the Socialist Future of Humanity, 1981

Intelligence, Music, Love, Parting

“Even if teen-age children aren't making a sound, it's quieter when they're gone. They put a boiling in the air around them. As they left, the whole house seemed to sigh and settle. No wonder poltergeists infest only houses with adolescent children.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter V

Housing, Children, Age

“A completely new attitude will take place in relation to work. Through the power of sound, man will build and create the artefacts of his civilization and control his environment, relating it to his real needs.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

“And I love being under the influence,
under the influence of you
And your voice sounds like it's an instrument
Everything you say rings true”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Under the Influence" (song) ("Under the Influence" on YouTube (with lyrics)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Ow3lFtNhI Studio albums, Playing in the Shadows (2011)

Love

“There is a sound of humility in the word 'under-standing'. Meditate upon it, then lower yourself to truly understand.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Understanding

“Nothing conduces so emphatically to the harmony of sounds as perfect classical piano play.”

Olga Rotari (1989) Moldovan classical pianist and chamber musician

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoTrlcR4KyA Youtube

Perfection

“Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

on Twitter https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1250292126643941376?s=20, Apr 14, 2020 COVID-19 pandemic 2020

Health, World

“Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I see now. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"Letters from Zedelghem", p. 460
Cloud Atlas (2004), Letters from Zedelghem (Part 2)

“Temporary defeat should mean only one thing, the certain knowledge that there is something wrong with your plan. Millions of men go through life in misery and poverty, because they lack a sound plan through which to accumulate a fortune.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich (1938) p. 73

Knowledge, Life, Men

“I will be more and more concerned with giving you sound and true political ideas, few people are better able to do this than I; since the age of 16 I have been involved in the big affairs of Europe.”

Leopold I of Belgium (1790–1865) German prince who became the first King of the Belgians

A royal puppet show in the Belgian royal family. The education of the first Belgian royal children. (Greet Donckers) http://www.ethesis.net/koningshuis/koningshuis_deel_II.htm#Hoofdstuk_2:_Publieke_sfeer%C2%A0_ AKP, Fund Leopold I, III Archives Conway, Letter from King Leopold I to Prince Leopold, 11 November 1850, 20/3.

People, Age, Idea