Quotes about speaking
page 4

“We also know that our support for civil society is not just about what we’re against, but also what we’re for. Because we’ve noticed that governments that are more responsive and effective are typically governments where the people are free to assemble, and speak their minds, and petition their leaders, and hold us accountable.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)

People, Support

“Man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep, and does not wake until he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not like this.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Sleep, Animals, Parting

“His Majesty [emperor Charles V], [in his court in Augsburg] sent for me. After the usual courtesies and examination of the pictures which I have brought, he asked for news of you.... I replied that at Venice, in Rome and in all Italy the public assumed that his Holiness [the new Pope], was well minded to make you.. [Cardinal] upon which Caesar [= Charles V] showed signs of pleasure in his face, saying he would greatly rejoice at such an event, which could not fail to please you, and so, dear brother [= close friend], I have done for you such service as I owe to a friend of your standing.... not a day passes but the Duke of Alva speaks to me of the 'divine Aretini', because he loves you so much..”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

Quote in Titian's letter to his friend Pietro Aretino in Venice, sent from Augsburg, 11 Nov. 1550, the original is in Lettere a P. Aretino' u.s. i. p. 147; as cited in Titian: his life and times - With some account of his family... Vol. 2. J. A. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle, Publisher London, John Murray, 1877, p. 198
1541-1576

Love, Pleasure

“But what’s also true is that each of us have to cultivate an attitude of tolerance and mutual respect. And for young people, we have to try to encourage each other to be tolerant and respectful. So in the United States, obviously one of the biggest problems historically has been the issue of racial discrimination. And part of our efforts to overcome racial discrimination involve passing laws like the Civil Rights Law and the Voting Rights Law, and that required marches and protests and Dr. King. But part of the effort was also people changing the hearts and minds, and realizing that just because somebody doesn’t look like me doesn’t mean that they’re not worthy of respect. And when you’re growing up and you saw a friend of yours call somebody by a derogatory name, a rude name because they were different, it’s your job to say to that person, actually, that’s not the right way to think. If you are Christian and you have a friend who says I hate Muslims, then it’s up to you to say to that friend, you know what, I don’t believe in that; I think that’s the wrong attitude, I think we have to be respectful of the Muslim population. If you’re Buddhist and you say -- you hear somebody in your group say I want to treat a Hindu differently, it’s your job to speak out. So the most important thing I think is for you to, in whatever circle of influence you have, speak out on behalf of tolerance and diversity and respect. If you are quiet, then the people who are intolerant, they’ll own the stage and they’ll set the terms of the debate. And one of the things that leadership requires is saying things even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s unpopular -- especially when it’s unpopular. So I hope that as you get more influence, you’ll continue to speak out on behalf of these values.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)

Hate, People, Law, Hope

“Already, the United States has imposed strong sanctions on Syria’s leaders. We supported a transfer of power that is responsive to the Syrian people. And many of our allies have joined in this effort. But for the sake of Syria -- and the peace and security of the world -- we must speak with one voice. There's no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

People, World, Peace, Support

“As one former prisoner put it in speaking to his fellow citizens, “Politics is your job. It’s not only for [the] politicians.” And we have an expression in the United States that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen -- not President, not Speaker, but citizen.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Yangon University Speech (November 2012)

Democracy

“When I speak here of our policy, I use the word without regard to anything immaterial and superficial, but in the sense which since the beginning of the party it has had for us in contrast to all other parties, – in the sense of the policy of the class struggle, which has very often changed in form, but in substance has remained the same, – our unique proletarian class policy, which separates us from all other political parties in the world of bourgeois society and excludes us from intercourse with them.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

World, Sense, Change

“To speak falsely is the mark of a slave, but the truth is noble.”

Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher

to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 83
Letters

Truth, Falseness

“It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book XII: The Book and the Ring, line 842.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Truth, Art, Way

“[Stalin's] purge caused me to examine the meaning of Communism…. I had always known of course that there were books critical of Communism…. I had never read them because I knew that the party did not want me to read them….. the first book I read… was called I Speak for the Silent [by] Professor Vladimir Tchernavin…. He was a little man in the Communist world, gentle, humane, good…. Suddenly for no reason at all he was arrested and carried away by the secret police…. Now for the first time, I believed that slave labor camps existed…. I said ‘this is evil, absolute evil. Of this evil I am a part.’ … If Communism were evil, what was left but moral chaos? …. The rags that fell from me were not only Communism. What fell was the whole web of the materialist modern mind – the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul….”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), pp. 79-83

God, Secret, Books, World

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

José Saramago book Raised from the Ground

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Men, Fate, Secret, World

“It is not also taught you in Scripture, that you should desire St. Rock to preserve you from the pestilence, to pray to St. Barbarra to defend you from thunder or gun-shot, to offer St. Loy an horse of wax, a pig to St. Anthony, a candle to St, Sithine. But I should be too long, if I were to rehearse unto you all the superstitions that have grown out of the invocation and praying to saints departed, wherewith men have been seduced, and God's honour given to creatures.
This was also no small abuse that we called the images by the names of the things, whom they did represent. For we were won't to say, "This is St. Ann's altar;"-"My father is gone a pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham;"-" In our church St. James standeth on the right hand of the high altar." These speeches we were wont to use, although they be not to be commended. For St. Austin in the exposition of the 113th Psalm affirmeth, that they who do call such images, as the carpenter hath made, do change the truth of God into a lie. It is not also taught you in all Scripture.
Thus, good children, I have declared how we were wont to abuse images, not that hereby I condemn your fathers, who were men of great devotion, and had an earnest love towards God, although their zeal in all points was not ruled and governed by true knowledge, but they were seduced and blinded partly by the common ignorance that reigned in their time, partly by the covetousness of their teachers, who abused the simplicity of the unlearned people to the maintenance of their own lucre and glory. But this be profitable, for if they had, either Christ would have taught it or the Holy Ghost would have revealed it unto the Apostles, which they did not. And if they did, the Apostles were very negligent that would not make some mention of it, and speak some good word for images, seeing that they speak so many against them. And by this means Anti-christ and his holy Papists had more knowledge or fervent zeal to give s godly things ad profitable for us, than had the very holy saints of Christ, yea more than Christ himself and the Holy Ghost. Now forasmuch, good children, as images be neither necessary nor profitable in our churches and temples, nor were not used at the beginning in Christ's nor the Apostles' time, nor many years after, and that at length they were brought in by bishops of Rome, maugre emperors' teeth; and seeing also, that they be very slanderous to Christ's religion, for by them the name of God is blasphemed among the infidels, Turks, and Jews, which because of our images do call Christian religion, idolatry and worshiping of images: and for as much also, as they have been so wonderfully abused within this realm to the high contumely and dishonor of God, and have been great cause of blindness and of much contention among the King's Majesty's loving subjects and are like so to be still, if they should remain: and chiefly seeing God's word speaketh so much against them, you may hereby right well consider what great causes and ground the King's Majesty had to take them away within his realm, following here in the example of the godly King Hezekias, who brake down the brazen serpent, when he saw it worshiped, and was therefore praised of God, notwithstanding at the first the same was made and set up by God's commandment, and was not only a remembrance of God's benefits, before received, but also a figure of Christ to come. And not only Hezekias, but also Manasses, and Jehosaphat, and Josias, the best kings that were of the Jews, did pull down images in the time of their reign.”

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury

The Life, Martyrdom, and Selections from the Writings of Thomas Cranmer https://books.google.com/books?id=FvNeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=The+Life,+Martyrdom,+and+Selections+from+the+Writings+of+Thomas+Cranmer+...&source=bl&ots=LbXiMjz5Zp&sig=0pi5SHuxfdt_YUoiJcxvLgr7x5E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzmZL_wsfaAhVl6YMKHWubBkcQ6AEILDAB by Thomas Cranmer, p.139-142, (1809)

Love, Men, God, Children

“I think that I've learned some lessons over the past four years, and the most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That's how I got elected and that's how the big accomplishments like health care got done – was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That's how we were able to cut taxes for middle class families. So, something that I'd really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people, so that they can put pressure on Congress to move some of these issues forward.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Univision forum, , quoted in [2012-09-20, Obama: ‘You Can’t Change Washington From The Inside’, Noah, Rothman, Mediaite.com, http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-you-cant-change-washington-from-the-inside/, 2012-09-21]
2012

People, Health, Family, Thinking

“Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Law, Decision

“We may enjoy our room in the tower, with the painted walls and the commodious bookcases, but down in the garden there is a man digging who buried his father this morning, and it is he and his like who live the real life and speak the real language.”

Virginia Woolf The Common Reader

"Montaigne" http://teaching.quotidiana.org/essays/Woolf_Montaigne.html The Common Reader (1925)

Life, Painting

“Tread Lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.”

Oscar Wilde Requiescat

Requiescat, st. 1 (1881)

“I have knelt in the mighty temples,
But the dumb gods make no sign;
They cannot speak to my spirit,
As thy soul speaks to mine.”

Fred Weatherly (1848–1929) English lawyer, author, lyricist and broadcaster

Song Nirvana

God, Soul

“We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want. ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around the world -- including millions of patriotic Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology. Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim. If we’re to succeed in defeating terrorism we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies, rather than push them away through suspicion and hate.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Address to the Nation by the President on San Bernardino (December 2015)

Death, Hate, War, World

“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Death, Hunger, People, Hell

“Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying "Enough!" He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable — this is Marcos.”

Subcomandante Marcos (1957) Mexican activist

" The Majority Disguised as the Resented Minority http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/16118" (31 May 1994)

Way, Search

“It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.”

George Gissing book The Unclassed

The Unclassed (1884), ch. 1: School

Pain

“Faith has a saving connection with Christ. Christ is on the shore, so to speak, holding the rope, and as we lay hold of it with the hand of our confidence, He pulls us to shore; but all good works having no connection with Christ are drifted along down the gulf of fell despair.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 228.

Faith, Confidence, Christ, Despair

“One of the things you want to do with a conception like compassion is that you want to start thinking about it like a psychologist, or like a scientist, because compassion is actually definable. The easiest way to approach it is to think about it in Big-5 terms, because it maps onto Agreeableness, which you can break down into Compassion and Politeness. The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way. We don't want to be thinking for a second that compassion isn't a virtue that can lead to violence, because it certainly can. The other problem with compassion - this is why we have conscientiousness - there's five canonical personality dimensions. Agreeableness is good if you are functioning in a kin system. You want to distribute resources equally for example among your children, because you want all of them to have the same chance, and even roughly the same outcome. That is, a good one. But the problem is that you can't extend that moral network to larger groups. As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it. You'll feel like, 'Oh wow, this person has actually given me good information, even though you will feel like a slug after they have taken you apart.' That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance. I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet. And so, we've introduced women into the political sphere radically over the past fifty years. We have no idea what the consequence of that is going to be. But we do know from our research, which is preliminary, that agreeableness really predicts political correctness, but female gender predicts over and above the personality trait, and that's something we found very rarely in our research. Usually the sex differences are wiped out by the personality differences, but not in this particular case. On top of that, women are getting married later, and they're having children much later, and they're having fewer of them, and so you also have to wonder what their feminine orientation is doing with itself in the interim, roughly speaking. A lot of it is being expressed as political opinion. Fair enough. That's fine. But it's not fine when it starts to shut down discussion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Life, Women, Children, People

“Underlying the concept of positivity is the conviction that the positive is intrinsically positive in itself, without anyone pausing to ask what is to be regarded as positive. … It is significant and really quite interesting that the term 'positive' actually contains this ambivalence. On the one hand, 'positive' means what is given, is postulated, is there—as when we speak of positivism as the philosophy that sticks to the facts. But, equally, 'positive' also refers to the good, the approvable, in a certain sense, the ideal. And I imagine that this semantic constellation expresses with precision what countless people actually feel to be the case.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 18

People, Feeling, Imagination, Sense

“There is a certain confidence that a newsreader exudes while reading the stories in a staccato manner. Although my Hindi is good, I realised that the one they speak is chaste. I tried reading from the teleprompter at the set, but I felt that I need to polish my reading skills to make it sound as close to that of a newsreader's. Since then, I've been reading a lot of Hindi papers and watching news channels.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

Sukirti Kandpal on playing a journalist in Dilli Wali Thakur Gurls https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tv/news/hindi/Why-Sukirti-Kandpal-is-chasing-the-media/articleshow/46665042.cms/

Confidence, Reading

“I take her hand, as I did before. I speak to her, rather timidly and at random: "Carnal love isn't the whole of love."”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

"It's love!" Marie answers.
Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Love

“I admire the proud and cold who go adventuring on the paths of great and demoniac beauty, and scorn "man" — but I do not envy them. For if anything is capable of making a poet out of a man of letters, it is this plebeian love of mine for the human, living, and commonplace. All warmth, all goodness, all humor is born of it, and it almost seems to me as if it were that love itself, of which it is written that a man might speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet without it be no more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”

Thomas Mann book Tonio Kröger

Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan

Love, Men, Beauty, Angels

“A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book V, Chapter 6.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)

Time, Housing

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, Fate

“And the supreme glory of all this, my love, is to think that maybe this isn't true, neither may I believe it true.

And when lying starts giving us pleasure, let's speak the truth so that we lie to it.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Original: E a suprema glória disto tudo, meu amor, é pensar que talvez isto não seja verdade, nem eu o creia verdadeiro.E quando a mentira comece a dar-nos prazer, falemos a verdade para lhe mentirmos.
Ibid., p. 280
The Book of Disquiet

Love, Pleasure, Truth, Lie

“Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Second Essay, Aphorism 14
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Men, Feeling

“In former days all animals could speak and so could the flowers, the trees and the stones and all lifeless things who were all created by the same God who had created man. Therefore man should be kind to all animals, and treat all lifeless things as if they could still hear and understand. On the day of the Last Judgement the animals would be called in first by God to give evidence against the dead man. Only after the animals had had their say would his fellow creatures be called in as witnesses.”

Axel Munthe book The Story of San Michele

Source: The Story of San Michele (1929), Ch. VII

God, Flowers, Understanding, Tree

“I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
When they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
My treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
My life when they murder by means of my
Hands, my death when they live me.”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

"Prayer Before Birth", line 11

Life, Death, World, Forgiveness

“We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)

Color, Way, Flowers, Tree

“Pain will force even the truthful to speak falsely.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 232
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Pain, Truth, Falseness

“I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men's discourses… 'Tis not the owning one's dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 145
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Men, Thinking

“We speak still of "sunrise" and "sunset." We do so as if the Copernican model of the solar system had not replaced, ineradicably, the Ptolemaic. Vacant metaphors, eroded figures of speech, inhabit our vocabulary and grammar. They are caught, tenaciously, in the scaffolding and recesses of our common parlance. There they rattle about like old rags or ghosts in the attic.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 1 (p. 3).

“Certain Socialist writers are fond of describing the Social-Democratic State of the future as implying the "emancipation of the proletarian and the woman." As regards the latter point, however, if emancipation is taken to include domination, we have not to wait so long. The highest development of modern capitalism, as exemplified in the English-speaking countries, has placed man to all intents and purposes, legally under the heel of woman. So far as the relations of the sexes are concerned, it would be the task of Socialism to emancipate man from this position, if sex-equality be the goal aimed at. The first step on the road towards such equality would necessarily consist in the abolition of modern female privilege.”

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) British barrister and journalist

Chapter 12: Socialists and Feminists http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Legal_Subjection_of_Men#Socialists_And_Feminists The Legal Subjection of Men (1908)

Sex, Waiting, Future, Country

“You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor… Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Sir Robert Peel
Biographical Studies (1907)

Men, Thinking

“It would be a hard task to discover the maker and father of this universe of ours, and even if we did find him, it would be impossible to speak of him to everyone.”

Plato book Timaeus

Section 28c http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0180:text=Tim.:section=28c, Greek http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0179%3Atext%3DTim.%3Asection%3D28c as quoted in The Watchtower, 2015, 2/15, pp. 19–23 http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2015127 Timaeus

Universe

“The first Greek-speaking people in the southern Balkan Peninsula arrived in Macedonia, Thessaly, and Epirus sometime after 2600 B. C. and developed, probably due to the extreme mountainous nature of the country, their several different dialects.”

David Noel Freedman (1922–2008) American biblical scholar, author, editor, archaeologist (1922-2008)

The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992) p. 1093.

People, Mountain, Nature, Country

“In God is my being, my me, my strength, my beatitude, my good, and my delight. I say mine at present because it is not possible to speak otherwise; but I do not mean by it any such thing as me or mine, or delight or good, or strength or stability, or beatitude; nor could I possibly turn my eyes to behold such things in heaven or in earth; and if, notwithstanding, I sometimes use words which may have the likeness of humility and of spirituality, in my interior I do not understand them, I do not feel them. In truth it astonishes me that I speak at all, or use words so far removed from the truth and from that which I feel. I see clearly that man in this world deceives himself by admiring and esteeming things which are not, and neither sees nor esteems the things which are”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Source: Life and Doctrine, Ch. XIV

God, Truth, World, Feeling

“When we speak of mom winning custody or of dad getting visitation time, we speak of someone winning, someone losing. When we speak of mom or dad spending “parent time” with a child, we speak of two parents, not a parent versus a visitor.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 187.

Moms, Parent, Time

“As the Holy Koran tells us: "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do today - to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

God, Truth

“Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.' They may admit that in organic chemistry there is need of long words, and that quantum physics requires formulas that are difficult to translate into ordinary English, but philosophy (they think) is different. It is not the function of philosophy – so they maintain – to teach something that uneducated people do not know; on the contrary, its function is to teach superior persons that they are not as superior as they thought they were, and that those who are really superior can show their skill by making sense of common sense. No one wants to alter the language of common sense, any more than we wish to give up talking of the sun rising and setting. But astronomers find a different language better, and I contend that a different language is better in philosophy. Let us take an example, that of perception. There is here an admixture of philosophical and scientific questions, but this admixture is inevitable in many questions, or, if not inevitable, can only be avoided by confining ourselves to comparatively unimportant aspects of the matter in hand. Here is a series of questions and answers.
Q. When I see a table, will what I see be still there if I shut my eyes?
A. That depends upon the sense in which you use the word 'see.'
Q. What is still there when I shut my eyes?
A. This is an empirical question. Don't bother me with it, but ask the physicists.
Q. What exists when my eyes are open, but not when they are shut?
A. This again is empirical, but in deference to previous philosophers I will answer you: colored surfaces.
Q. May I infer that there are two senses of 'see'? In the first, when I 'see' a table, I 'see' something conjectural about which physics has vague notions that are probably wrong. In the second, I 'see' colored surfaces which cease to exist when I shut my eyes.
A. That is correct if you want to think clearly, but our philosophy makes clear thinking unnecessary. By oscillating between the two meanings, we avoid paradox and shock, which is more than most philosophers do.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 159

People, Color, Question, Thinking

“It’s easier to speak through the keys than through words.”

Li Yundi (1982) Chinese pianist

telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10863146/Lang-Lang-Weve-never-met.html

“However much Rome may be in the habit of speaking and writing, for my own part, I shall give these libellers a lesson in good manners.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Cesare to his father, Pope Alexander VI, (November, 1501), as quoted by Rafael Sabatini, 'The Life of Cesare Borgia', Chapter XI: The Letter to Silvio Savelli.

Parting

“I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all — the colleges I mean — like an opera.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Letter to Katharine Tynan (25 August 1888)

People, Beauty, Dreams, Singing

“There are the most amusing things everywhere [in The Netherlands]. Houses of every colour, hundreds of windmills and enchanting boats, extremely friendly Dutchmen who almost all speak French…. I have not had time to visit the museums, I wish to work first of all and I'll treat myself to that later.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in a letter to Camille Pissarro, 17 June 1871; first part cited in: Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001 http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012200101_01/_van012200101_01_0012.php Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 2001. p. 140; second part cited in: Ann Dumas, ‎Denver Art Museum, ‎High Museum of Art (2007), Inspiring Impressionism: : the Impressionists and the art of the past. p. 181 1870 - 1890

Time, Housing

“Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some 'future' events may be linked to others, O. K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Transparent Things

Transparent Things (1972), Ch. 24.

Life, Future, Personality

“A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far." If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
Context: Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far." If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.

Lie

“Would you deny for others what you demand for yourself?
Cool down mama, cool off
You speak of signs and wonders, I need something other.
I would believe if I was able, but I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Waiting

“Sometimes my sister and I dream of having a run-of-the-mill father. He would make coffee and toss salads. He would not prefer his work to us, and he would tell us instead: "How pretty you look, my dear, tell me what you did today." He would speak to us with words of affectionate banality.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

Quote About

Dreams, Coffee, Sister

“When I hear people speak of the evolution of an artist, it seems to me that they are considering him standing between two mirrors that face each other and reproduce his image an infinite number of times, and that they contemplate the successive images of one mirror as his past, and the images of the other mirror as his future, while his real image is taken as his present. They do not consider that they all are the same images in different planes…”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1920's

People, Time, Success, Past

“It seems to me that this last piece, The Poet Speaks, which is the title Schumann gave to this immortal work, should be a transition into a kind of intimate reverie. It is not just about making a beautiful sound and expressive phrasing. You also need to create a sense of dreaming. The truth is, you need to dream this piece, rather than play it.
Will you allow me to take your place? These two phrases are not connected. They are two different elements… of the same musical state. Here, like a question… And here again, another, tenderly asking the way. And from this moment, you should convey the music not just through the notes but through some kind of inspiration drawn from its immortal spirit. Now the sonorities should fade away…grow fainter and dimmer…and you are left simply in the presence of a reminiscent dream.”

Alfred Cortot (1877–1962) Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor

Alfred Cortot: Master Class on Schumann Kinderszenen (1953) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNUNNNNj_Qw

Truth, Beauty, Dreams, Music

“No doubt the great majority of them are in the cemetery long ago, and I suppose the rest of us will join them before long. Speaking for myself I am willing; in fact I believe I have been willing ever since I was eighteen years old; not urgent, but willing, merely willing.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 288

“I love to think of nature as unlimited broadcasting stations, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour and every moment of our lives, if we will only tune in and remain so.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

How to Search for Truth, letter to Hubert W. Pelt (1930-02-24)

Love, God, Nature, Thinking

“Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Source: The Discovery of the Child (1948), Ch. 1

Soul

“Even if the things are against his faith and religion, it's not to be said: don't speak and shut up your mouth, for thus there won't be clearing of the religion. Vice Versa, in this case we say: speak as you want.”

Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1512–1609) Czech rabbi

Beer Hagola, Ch. 7

Faith, Religion

“The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us, is seldom entered by a sail from our world.”

Tacitus book Germania

Source: Germania (98), Chapter 2

Hostility, World, Time

“And when the father who begat it perceived the created image of the eternal gods, that it had motion and life, he rejoiced and was well pleased; and he bethought him to make it yet more nearly like its pattern. Now whereas that is a living being eternally existent, even so he essayed to make this All the like to the best of his power. Now so it was that the nature of the ideal was eternal. But to bestow this attribute altogether upon a created thing was impossible; so he bethought him to make a moving image of eternity, and while he was ordering the universe he made of eternity that abides in unity an eternal image moving according to number, even that which we have named time. For whereas days and nights and months and years were not before the universe was created, he then devised the generation of them along with the fashioning of the universe. Now all these are portions of time, and was and shall be are forms of time that have come to be, although we wrongly ascribe them unawares to the eternal essence. For we say that it was and is and shall be, but in verity is alone belongs to it: and was and shall be it is meet should be applied only to Becoming which moves in time; for these are motions. But that which is ever changeless without motion must not become elder or younger in time, neither must it have become so in past nor be so in the future; nor has it to do with any attributes that Becoming attaches to the moving objects of sense: these have come into being as forms of time, which is the image of eternity and revolves according to number. Moreover we say that the become is the become, and the becoming is the becoming, and that which shall become is that which shall become, and not-being is not-being. In all this we speak incorrectly. But concerning these things the present were perchance not the right season to inquire particularly.”

Plato book Timaeus

38b, as quoted by R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (1888)
Timaeus

Life, God, Fashion, Nature

“Our decisions are to a much greater extent dependent on our desire to conform to the standards of our class and environment than we are inclined to admit. A considerable proportion of our reasoning is merely an automatic function, so to speak, of influences and impressions which have become part of us, and anyone who has been brought up from childhood in the stern school of military discipline is particularly apt to succumb to the hypnotic and compulsive force exercised by an order of word of command; a force which is logically entirely incomprehensible and which irresistibly undermines his will. In the straitjacket of a uniform, even though fully aware of their absurdity, an officer will carry out his instructions lie a sleep-walker, unresistingly and almost unconsciously.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Lie, School, Exercises, Decision

“I never avoided the media. Truly, speaking I don’t have any grudges. See, I am ready to give all the answers. Actually, I have changed. There was a time, when I would show my annoyance but every action is guided by a reason. The media annoyed me. I still feel there are certain questions, which are personal, which only my parents or maybe the ones who are really close to me have the right to ask.”

Salman Khan (1965) Indian film actor

Quotes By Salman

Feeling, Question, Parent, Change

“When one is not understood one should as a rule lower one’s voice, because when one really speaks loudly enough and is not heard, it is because people do not want to hear. One had better begin to mutter to oneself, then they get curious.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1988), p. 30

People

“Enthusiasm does not always speak for those who arouse it, but always for those who experience it.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 76.

“Playing Doctor Who came as a great surprise to me. I had no idea that I would enjoy it so much. All that was required of me was to be able to speak complete gobbledygook with conviction.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Idea

“He went on to speak of the manner in which slavery was treated by the Constitution. The word 'slave' is no where used; the supply of slaves was to be prohibited after 1808; they stopped the spread of it in the territories; seven of the states abolished it. He argued very conclusively that it was then regarded as an evil which would eventually be got rid of, and that they desired, once rid of it, to have nothing in the constitution to remind them of it. The Republicans go back to first principles and deal with it as a wrong. Mason, of Va., said openly that the framers of our government were anti-slavery. Hammond of S. C., said 'Washington set this evil example'. Bully Brooks said: 'At the time the Constitution was formed, no one supposed slavery would last till now.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

We stick to the policy of our fathers.
1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Evil, Time

“In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them. And inasmuch as the continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here, comparatively speaking, than there is there; and if they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming; and I bid them all God speed.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Gazette version

Men, God, People, World

“Most English-speaking people … will admit that cellar door is "beautiful," especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful…Well then, in Welsh, for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

English and Welsh (1955)

People, Pleasure, Beauty, Sense

“I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, — through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Letter 4: Theosophy of Julius
The Philosophical Letters

World, Soul, History, Nature

“I'm not a Starfleet commander, or T. J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-170… [some audience members say "1"], or own a phaser. I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock [picture of Dr. Benjamin Spock is shown on screen behind him]. And no, I've never had green alien sex, but I'm sure it'd be quite an evening. [Pomp and Circumstance begins playing. ] I speak English and French, not Klingon! I drink Labatt's, not Romulan Ale! And when someone says to me 'live long and prosper', I seriously mean it when I say, 'get a life'. My doctor's name is not McCoy, it's Ginsberg [nude picture of Dr. Ginsberg shown on screen]. And tribbles were puppets, not real animals. PUPPETS! And when I speak, I never, ever talk like Every. Word. Is. Its. Own. Sentence. I live in California, but I was raised in Montreal. And I believe in Priceline. com, where you never have to pay full price for airline tickets, hotels, and car rentals! I've appeared on stage at Stratford, at Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall, and the Monkland Theatre in NDG. And, yes, I've gone where no man has gone before, but… I was in Mexico and her father gave me permission! My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

From a Just for Laughs appearance in a parody of the popular Molson "I Am Canadian" commercials (21 July 2007) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1648058156561008324&q=i+am+canadian.

Life, Sex, Cars, Drink

“Through the fortunate effect of my frankness, I had the rarest and surest opportunity to know a man well, which is to study him at leisure in his private life and living, so to speak, with himself. For he share himself without reservation and made me feel as much at home in his house as in mine. I had almost no other abode than his own.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Life, Feeling, Home, Study

“The Ramayana, the Puranas and the Dharmashastras paint the same portrait of an ancient land, every spot of which is sacred to some cultural memory or the other. The Jainagama and the Tripitaka speak again and again of sixteen Mahajanapadas, which spanned the spread of Bharatavarsha in the life-time of Bhagvan Mahavira and the Buddha. Even a dry compendium on grammar, the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, provides a near complete count of all the Janapadas in ancient India-Gandhara and Kamboja, Sindhu and Sauvira, Kashmir and Kekaya, Madra and Trigarta, Kuru and Panchala, Kaushala and Kashi, Magadha and Videha, Anga and Vanga, Kirata and Kamarupa, Suhma and Udra, Vatsa and Matsya, Abhira and Avanti, Nishadha and Vidarbha, Dandakaranya and Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala, Chola and Pandya. The epic poetry poured out by Kalidasa, Magha, Bharavi and Sriharsha continues the same tradition of talking endlessly about Bharatavarsha as a single and indivisible geographical entity, as a karmabhûmi for Gods and Goddesses, Brahmarshis and Rajarshis, and as higher than heaven for all those who have had the good fortune of being born in it.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Life, God, Memory, Time

“We went to the Opera to hear music of the vanguard, Maximilian by Darius Milhaud. We clutched our chair. But we were hurled out of it by such a hurricane of wrong notes that we found ourselves, half dead, on the stairway, without knowing how we could fall down quite so far. The composer knows the grammar, the spelling and the language; but he can speak only Esperanto and Volapuk. It is a work of a Communist traveling salesman.”

Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) French composer and teacher

Anonymous reviewer, as quoted in Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time (1965) by Nicolas Slonimsky, p. 126
About

Music, Travel, Dead

“There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of "aristocrats of the spirit," reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something. As is well known, it is a favorite term among ambitious Jews. For spirit alone does not make noble. Rather, there must be something to ennoble the spirit. What then is required? Blood.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Sec. 942 (Notebook W I 5. August - September 1885, KGW VII, 3.412, KSA 11.678)
The Will to Power (1888)

Birth

“So today, let me say: Sisters and brothers of India — my confidence in what our nations can achieve together is rooted in the values we share. For we may have our different histories and speak different languages, but when we look at each other, we see a reflection of ourselves.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Address to the People of India (January 2015)

Confidence, History, Sister

“Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and considered by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

p 48
The Undiscovered Self (1958)

World

“There is a war against vice in Lancaster. I am going home to speak for vice.”

Charles Demuth (1883–1935) American painter

Quoted in Speaking for Vice: Homosexuality in the Art of Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and the First American Avant-Garde by Jonathan Weinberg (Yale University Press, 1993).

War, Home

“And in that moment we all thought of the space that her round arms would occupy moving backward and forward with the rolling pin over the dough, her bosom leaning over the great mound of flour and eggs, […] and we thought of the space the flour would occupy, and the wheat for the flour, and the fields to raise the wheat, and the mountains from which the water would flow to irrigate the fields; […] of the space it would take for the Sun to arrive with its rays, to ripen the wheat; of the space for the Sun to condense from the clouds of stellar gases and burn; of the quantities of stars and galaxies and galactic masses in flight through space which would be needed to hold suspended every galaxy, every nebula, every sun, every planet, and at the same time we thought of it, this space was inevitably being formed, at the same time that Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0 was uttering those words: "… ah, what noodles, boys!" the point that contained her and all of us was expanding in a halo of distance in light-years and light-centuries and billions of light-millennia, and we were being hurled to the four corners of the universe, […] and she, dissolved into I don't know what kind of energy-light-heat, she, Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0, she who in the midst of our closed, petty world had been capable of a generous impulse, "Boys, the noodles I would make for you!," a true outburst of general love, initiating at the same moment the concept of space and, properly speaking, space itself, and time, and universal gravitation, and the gravitating universe, making possible billions and billions of suns, and of planets, and fields of wheat, and Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0s, scattered through the continents of the planets, kneading with floury, oil-shiny, generous arms, and she lost at that very moment, and we, mourning her loss.”

Italo Calvino book Cosmicomics

Pages 46-47, "All at One Point".
Cosmicomics (1965)

Love, World, Mountain, Star

“But I do believe there are certain principles that are universal. I think that all people want basic dignity and want basic freedom, and want to be able to worship as they please without being discriminated against, or they should be able to speak their mind about an important issue pertaining to their community without being arrested.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

People, Communication, Thinking, Freedom

“Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power — absolutely non-democratic — reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy. We citizens are not fulfilling our duties either. Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Banquet Speech

World, Democracy, Thinking

“[One of the company… said: …is not this the direct contrary of what we admitted before—that out of the greater came the less and out of the less the greater, and that opposites are simply generated from opposites; whereas now this seems to be utterly denied. ] …then we were speaking of opposites in the concrete, and now of the essential opposite which, as is affirmed, neither in us nor in nature can ever be at variance with itself… these essetial opposites will never, as we maintain, admit of generation into or out of one another.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Nature

“My relations with Korchnoi depend on whether he has slept well. If he had bad dreams, he speaks a lot of rubbish.”

Anatoly Karpov (1951) Russian chess player

Interview on Chessbase 06.07.2005 http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2495

Dreams, Dependency

“[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Colette O'Niel, October 23, 1916; published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970, p. 87
1910s

Hell

“I said that to invite minds to concern themselves with Mind and its destiny was a sign and symptom of the times. Would that idea have occurred to me, had not a whole body of impressions been sufficiently significant and powerful to reflect themselves in me, and for that reflection to become action? And that action, which consists of expressing it in your presence, would not perhaps have been accomplished had I not felt that my impressions were those of many other people, that the sensation of a diminution of mind, of a menace to culture, of a twilight of the most pure gods was a sensation which imposed itself with increasing strength on all those who are capable of feeling something in the order of superior values of which we are speaking.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 172

God, People, Feeling, Idea

“I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Palm Sunday

"Self-Interview", originally appeared in The Paris Review no. 69 (1977)
Palm Sunday (1981)

History, Literature, Thinking

“Language is texture of images and music. We speak in images and rhythm, by taking help of words.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

Foreword, 'Tales of Transformation: English Translation of Tagore's Chitrangada and Chandalika', Lopamudra Banerjee, (2018). https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DQPD8F4/ From Prose

Music, Help

“The softer you find your child is, the more you are to seek occasions, at fit times, thus to harden him. The great art in this is, to begin with what is but very little painful, and to proceed by insensible degrees, when you are playing, and in good humour with him, and speaking well of him: and when you have once got him to think himself made amends for his suffering by the praise is given him for his courage; when he can take pride in giving such marks of his manliness, and can prefer the reputation of being brave and stout, to the avoiding a little pain, or the shrinking under it; you need nor despair in time and by the assistance of his growing reason, to master his timorousness, and mend the weakness of his constitution.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Pain, Art, Courage, Thinking

“Perhaps because of my fever, perhaps because of my lofty pain, I imagine that some one there is declaiming a great poem, that some one is speaking of Prometheus. He has stolen light from the gods. In his entrails he feels the pain, always beginning again, always fresh, gathering from evening to evening, when the vulture steals to him as it would steal to its nest. And you feel that we are all like Prometheus because of desire, but there is neither vulture nor gods.
There is no paradise except that which we create in the great tomb of the churches. There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of living.
There is no mysterious fire. I have stolen the truth. I have stolen the whole truth. I have seen sacred things, tragic things, pure things, and I was right. I have seen shameful things, and I was right. And so I have entered the kingdom of truth, if, while preserving respect to truth and without soiling it, we can use the expression that deceit and religious blasphemy employ.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII

God, Pain, Truth, Feeling

“The people as a whole can be benefited morally and materially by a system which shall permit of ample reward for exceptional efficiency, but which shall nevertheless secure to the average man, who does his work faithfully and well, the reward to which he is entitled. Remember that I speak only of the man who does his work faithfully and well. The man who shirks his work, who is lazy or vicious, or even merely incompetent, deserves scant consideration; we may be sorry for his family, but it is folly to waste sympathy on the man himself; and it is also folly for sentimentalists to try to shift the burden of blame from such a man himself to “society” and it is an outrage to give him the reward given to his hard-working, upright, and efficient brother. Still less should we waste sympathy on the criminal; there are altogether too many honest men who need it; and one chief point in dealing with the criminal should be to make him understand that he will be in personal peril if he becomes a lawbreaker. I realize entirely that in the last analysis, with the nation as with the individual, it is private character that counts for most. It is because of this realization that I gladly lay myself open to the charge that I preach too much, and dwell too much upon moral commonplaces; for though I believe with all my heart in the nationalization of this Nation—in the collective use on behalf of the American people of the governmental powers which can be derived only from the American people as a whole—yet I believe even more in the practical application by the individual of those great fundamental moralities.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Men, People, Family, Understanding

“Is it vanity that I should take great pleasure in being hailed as the Grand Old Man of India? No, that title, which speaks volumes for the warm, grateful and generous hearts of my countrymen, is to me, whether I deserve it or not, the highest reward of my life.”

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) Indian politician

Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji: "The Grand Old Man of India"

Life, Pleasure, Heart

“For want of the apparatus of propositional functions, many logicians have been driven to the conclusion that there are unreal objects. It is argued, e. g., by Meinong, that we can speak about "the golden mountain," "the round square," and so on; we can make true propositions of which these are the subjects; hence they must have some kind of logical being, since otherwise the propositions in which they occur would be meaningless. In such theories, it seems to me, there is a failure of that feeling for reality which ought to be preserved even in the most abstract studies. Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can; for logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 16: Descriptions

World, Feeling, Mountain, Failure

“It does not matter what’s the color of your skin, what language do you speak, what religion you believe in. It is that we should all consider each other as human beings and we should respect each other and we should all fight for our rights, for the rights of children, for the rights of women and for the rights of every human being.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Speech (October 10, 2014)

Women, Children, Religion, Color

“In a quality object-oriented software system, you will find many classes that speak the language of the domain expert”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object Solutions: Managing the Object-Oriented Project. (1996), p. 39; as cited in: Journal of Database Management. Vol 10-11. p. 33

“You & James Ferdinand simply can't learn to distinguish betwixt intellectual opinion & irrelevant instinctive emotion... For instance, he has the idea that I place an exaggerated intellectual valuation on the 18th century merely because my chance emotions have given me a strong but irrational subjective sense of belonging to it. I've told that bird dozens of times that I have no especial intellectual brief for Georgian days... He can't understand my ability to class as merely one period among others an age to which random early impressions have so closely bound my emotions & sense of identity... the point is that my own personal mess of subjective emotions has nothing whatever to do with my intellectual opinions. I have freely declared myself at all times (like everybody else in his respective way) a mere product of my background, & do not consider the values of that background as applicable to outsiders. The only way for the individual to achieve any contentment or harmonic relationship to a pattern is to adhere to the background naturally his; & that is what I am doing. Others I urge to adhere to their own respective backgrounds & traditions, however remote from mine these may be. When I venture now & then to suggest values of a more general kind, I approach the problem in an entirely different way—speaking not as Old Theobald of His Majesty's Rhode-Island Colony, but as the cosmic & impersonal Ec'h-Pi-El, denizen of the invisible world 'Ui-ulh in the second zone of curved space outside angled space... If there is any approach to an absolute value in the cosmos—or at least on this planet—then this is it. Sincerity—is-or-isn't-ness—technical perfection—harmony—coherence—consistency—symmetry—all these things are obviously aspects of one single property of space, energy, & general mathematical harmonics whose universality gives it the deepest possible significance. I have thought this all my life, & that is why to me one Newton or Einstein, one M. Atilius Regulus, M. Porcius Cato, or P. Cornelius Scipio, seems to me in certain ways worth a full dozen of your prattling little Keatses & Baudelaires.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 312
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Life, Age, World, Way