Quotes about stage
page 11

Phil Collins photo

“So how do you like my overall look? (Jay's usual stage attire was bib overalls)”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Kathy Griffin photo
Norbert Wiener photo
Edmund White photo
Ellen Kushner photo
Sean O`Casey photo
Muhammad photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Johannes Tauler photo
Immortal Technique photo

“But you can't read history at an illiterate stage / And you can't raise a family on minimum wage”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

Harlem Streets
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Loujain al-Hathloul photo
Karl Kraus photo

“I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

George W. Bush photo

“When you're off the stage, you're off the stage.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2011, Speech at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation (2011)

Ba Jin photo
Jack White photo
Ludwig Feuerbach photo
Max Scheler photo
David Crystal photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
George W. Bush photo
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“I take the world to be but as a stage,
Where net-maskt men do play their personage.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Dialogue between Heraclitus and Democritus. Compare: "All the world ’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players", William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act ii. Scene 7.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Mao Zedong photo
Hermann Weyl photo
L. Frank Baum photo

“The scenery and costumes of 'The Wizard of Oz' were all made in New York — Mr. Mitchell was a New York favorite, but the author was undoubtedly a Chicagoan, and therefore a legitimate butt for the shafts of criticism. So the critics highly praised the Poppy scene, the Kansas cyclone, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, but declared the libretto was very bad and teemed with 'wild and woolly western puns and forced gags.' Now, all that I claim in the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' is the creation of the characters of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the story of their search for brains and a heart, and the scenic effects of the Poppy Field and the cyclone. These were a part of my published fairy tale, as thousands of readers well know. I have published fifteen books of fairy tales, which may be found in all prominent public and school libraries, and they are entirely free, I believe, from the broad jokes the New York critics condemn in the extravaganza, and which, the New York people are now laughing over. In my original manuscript of the play were no 'gags' nor puns whatever. But Mr. Hamlin stated positively that no stage production could succeed without that accepted brand of humor, and as I knew I was wholly incompetent to write those 'comic paper side-splitters' I employed one of the foremost New York 'tinkerers' of plays to write into my manuscript these same jokes that are now declared 'wild and woolly' and 'smacking of Chicago humor.' If the New York critics only knew it, they are praising a Chicago author for the creation of the scenic effects and characters entirely new to the stage, and condemning a well-known New York dramatist for a brand of humor that is palpably peculiar to Puck and Judge. I am amused whenever a New York reviewer attacks the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' because it 'comes from Chicago.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Letter to "Music and the Drama", The Chicago Record-Herald (3 February 1903)
Letters and essays

Edmund Sears photo

“Death is a stage in human progress, to be passed as we would pass from childhood to youth, or from youth to manhood, and with the same consciousness of an everlasting nature.”

Edmund Sears (1810–1876) American minister

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 177.

John Berger photo
El Lissitsky photo
Ian Fleming photo
Edward O. Wilson photo

“Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 69.

Damon Runyon photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Pentti Linkola photo
Sueton photo

“In the Pontic triumph one of the decorated wagons, instead of a stage-set representing scenes from the war, like the rest, carried a simple three-word inscription: I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED! This referred not to the events of the war [against Pontus], like the other inscriptions, but to the speed with which it had been won.”
Pontico triumpho inter pompae fercula trium verborum praetulit titulum VENI·VIDI·VICI non acta belli significantem sicut ceteris, sed celeriter confecti notam.

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, Ch. 37

Richard Strauss photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Arshile Gorky photo
David Brewster photo
Nicole Lapin photo
David C. McClelland photo
Herbert Marcuse photo

“In the most advanced areas of this civilization, the social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal “to go along” appears neurotic and impotent. This is the socio-psychological aspect of the political event that marks the contemporary period: the passing of the historical forces which, at the preceding stage of industrial society, seemed to represent the possibility of new forms of existence. But the term “introjection” perhaps no longer describes the way in which the individual by himself reproduces and perpetuates the external controls exercised by his society. Introjection suggests a variety of relatively spontaneous processes by which a Self (Ego) transposes the “outer” into the “inner.” Thus introjection implies the existence of an inner dimension distinguished from and even antagonistic to the external exigencies—an individual consciousness and an individual unconscious apart from public opinion and behavior. The idea of “inner freedom” here has its reality: it designates the private space in which man may become and remain “himself.” Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and industrial psychology has long since ceased to be confined to the factory. The manifold processes of introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole. This immediate, automatic identification (which may have been characteristic of primitive forms of association) reappears in high industrial civilization; its new “immediacy,” however, is the product of a sophisticated, scientific management and organization. In this process, the “inner” dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power of negative thinking—the critical power of Reason—is at home, is the ideological counterpart to the very material process in which advanced industrial society silences and reconciles the opposition. The impact of progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life, and to the dynamic capability of producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life. The efficiency of the system blunts the individuals' recognition that it contains no facts which do not communicate the repressive power of the whole. If the individuals find themselves in the things which shape their life, they do so, not by giving, but by accepting the law of things—not the law of physics but the law of their society.”

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 9-11

Colin Wilson photo
Boris Johnson photo

“Had it been us staging the Games, I don't think we would necessarily have done the switcheroo with the girl with the braces”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

" Boris Johnson In Beijing http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/aug/21/boris.politicsandsport?gusrc=rss&feed=politics", The Guardian, 21 August 2008

When asked whether he had any criticisms of the Beijing Olympic Games.
2000s, 2008

Georg Büchner photo

“We are always on stage, even when we are stabbed in earnest at the end.”

Act II.
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
John Mayer photo

“I won't ever get on stage at a comedy club when people know about it.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

John at his MySpace blog
2006). "John Mayer, Stand Up Comedian?" http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2006/06/john_mayer_stan.html Comedy Central Insider (accessed August 15, 2006

William Edward Hartpole Lecky photo
Paul Morphy photo

“Starting with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, this flattering of Muslims by praising Islam culminated in Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava - the opiate which lulled the Hindus into a deep slumber such as they had never known vis-à-vis Muslim aggression…. Anyone who questioned the pious proposition that the Quran was as good as the Vedas and the Puranas, ran the risk of being nailed down as an “enemy of communal harmony”….. That part of the “Muslim minority” which had voted for Pakistan but had chosen to stay in India, restarted the old game when India was proclaimed a secular state pledged to freedom of propagation for all religions. It revived its tried and tested trick of masquerading as a “poor and persecuted minority”. It cooked up any number of Pirpur Reports. The wail went up that the “lives, liberties and honour of the Muslims were not safe” in India, in spite of India’s “secular pretensions”. At the same time, street riots were staged on every possible pretext. The “communal situation” started becoming critical once again. …. And once again, the political leadership came out with a make-belief. The big-wigs from all political parties were collected in a “National Integration Council”. It was pointed out by the leftist professors that the major cause of “communal trouble” was the “bad habit” of living in the past on the part of “our people”. Most of the politicians knew no history and no religion for that matter. They all agreed with one voice that Indian history, particularly that of the “medieval Muslim period”, should be re-written. That, they pleaded, was the royal road to “national integration.””

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Preston Manning photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“In the pulpit, hypocrites have been worshiped; upon the stage they have been held up to derision and execration.”

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

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

Kelly Clarkson photo

“I'm usually barefoot. That's how I'm most comfortable. I like my feet to be on the ground. I like to jump around, I like to fly across the stage.”

Kelly Clarkson (1982) American singer-songwriter, actress

From Entertainment Weekly, December 24, 2003

Thomas Piketty photo

“Solutions require thinking through a series of interrelated steps or stages, analyzing a number of rules at each point, and always keeping in mind conclusions reached at earlier points.”

Harold Kelley (1921–2003) American psychologist & academic

Harold Kelley and John W. Thibaut. "Group problem solving." The handbook of social psychology 4 (1969): 1-101; p. 69-70

François Bernier photo
Francis Marion Crawford photo
Paul Klee photo

“In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways. It is precisely the way which is productive - this is the essential thing: becoming is more important than being.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1912), # 928, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1911 - 1914

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.

One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!

First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.

I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.

The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.

If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.

It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.

Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.

Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.

According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.

The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.

To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.

Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.

When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.

The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

James Braid photo
Machado de Assis photo

“Destiny is not only a dramatist, it is also its own stage manager. That is, it sets the entrances of the characters on scene, gives them letters and other objects, and produces the off-stage noises to go with the dialogue: thunder, a carriage, a shot.”

O destino não é só dramaturgo, é também o seu próprio contra-regra, isto é, designa a entrada dos personagens em cena, dá-lhes as cartas e outros objetos, e executa dentro os sinais correspondentes ao diálogo, uma trovoada, um carro, um tiro.
Source: Dom Casmurro (1899), Ch. 73, pp. 159-60.

Erik Naggum photo
Ausonius photo

“Every stage of life has its troubles, and no man is content with his own age.”
Omne aevum curae; cunctis sua displicet aetas.

Ausonius (310–395) poet

Eclogae 2, line 10; translation from Hugh Gerard Evelyn White Ausonius ([1919-21] 1951) vol. 1, p. 165.

Asher Peres photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Clement Attlee photo
Glen Cook photo
Rik Mayall photo

“On stage you can group 200 people together and scare them or embarrass them or whatever. You can't do that on TV. You have to use the conventions, that's why Kevin [Turvey] works so well.”

Rik Mayall (1958–2014) British comedian and actor

New Musical Express, November 7, 1981 http://rikmayall.info/quotes1.htm.

Albert Einstein photo
Jeremy Irons photo
El Lissitsky photo

“For us [the young artists in Vitebsk, before 1920] Suprematism did not signify the recognition of an absolute form which was part of an already completed universal system, on the contrary; here stood revealed for the first time in all its purity the clear sign and plan for a definite new world never before experienced - a world which issues forth from our inner being and which is only now in the first stages of its formation, for this reason the square [ Malevich's Black and Red Square ] of suprematism became a beacon.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

Quote from Lissitzky's essay of 1920, 'Suprematism in World Reconstruction'; as quoted by Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, in El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, trans. Helene Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1968), p. 327
1915 - 1925

Mike Huckabee photo

“It's a theocratic war. And I don't know if anybody fully understands that. I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

to Christian Broadcasting Network, quoted in * Steve
Benen
Has Huckabee Been Lying About Having a Theology Degree?
2007-12-14
The Carpetbagger Report
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/70722/
2011-03-01
http://web.archive.org/web/20080111154953/http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/70722/
2008-01-11

Hermann Hesse photo

“But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.”

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Philip Hammond photo
George W. Bush photo
Jerome Corsi photo
Irene Dunne photo
Laisenia Qarase photo
Umberto Boccioni photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Zakir Hussain (politician) photo
Jim Henson photo

“I was very interested in theatre—mostly in stage design but I did a little bit of acting.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Page 61.
Interview with Judy Harris (1982)

John Buchan photo
Max Scheler photo

“"Another situation generally exposed to ressentiment danger is the older generation's relation with the younger. The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate, we avoid and flee the “tormenting” recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation. Yet this source of ressentiment is also subject to an important historical variation. In the earliest stages of civilization, old age as such is so highly honored and respected for its experience that ressentiment has hardly any chance to develop. But education spreads through printing and other modern media and increasingly replaces the advantage of experience. Younger people displace the old from their positions and professions and push them into the defensive. As the pace of “progress” increases in all fields, and as the changes of fashion tend to affect even the higher domains (such as art and science), the old can no longer keep up with their juniors. “Novelty‟ becomes an ever greater value. This is doubly true when the generation as such is seized by an intense lust for life, and when the generations compete with each other instead of cooperating for the creation of works which outlast them. “Every cathedral,” Werner Sombart writes, “every monastery, every town hall, every castle of the Middle Ages bears testimony to the transcendence of the individual's span of life: its completion spans generations which thought that they lived for ever. Only when the individual cut himself loose from the community which outlasted him, did the duration of his personal life become his standard of happiness.” Therefore buildings are constructed ever more hastily—Sombart cites a number of examples. A corresponding phenomenon is the ever more rapid alternation of political regimes which goes hand in hand with the progression of the democratic movement. But every change of government, every parliamentary change of party domination leaves a remnant of absolute opposition against the values of the new ruling group. This opposition is spent in ressentiment the more the losing group feels unable to return to power. The “retired official” with his followers is a typical ressentiment figure. Even a man like Bismarck did not entirely escape from this danger."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

“He had come there dissatisfied with his work, even though his multi-kinetic work was admired and winning him professional recognition. However, at that moment, other ideas were gestating and he wanted to add what he called a "fifth dimension" to his art - that of artificial intelligence. […] : [At the colony, ] he was able to turn his thoughts inward, hoping to discover the new methods and direction that would more deeply satisfy his creative needs. It was at this point, while watching the motions and patterns of sun on leaves in the New Hampshire woods one morning, that Tsai finally achieved the revelatory breakthrough that changed his art and liberated his creative energies. As he put it, he wanted to create "natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, with intelligence," and he found his solution in an unlikely combination of natural phenomenon, the precedent of Gabo's singular (and unrepeated) kinetic sculpture, and the new resource of contemporary analog and digital technology. Speaking of this moment of revelation, Tsai said that he had quite deliberately turned himself into "a sort of plant": facing his chair into the sunshine in the morning, he turned his body in stages throughout the day, mulling over ways of make an "art that presented the observer with natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, and art that could convey the awe I felt while watching sunbeams shimmer through forest leaves." But a work that would "shimmer" simply did not do enough either for the artist or viewer, Tsai concluded. It must also respond in some way to the observer; it would have to work on a new feedback principle and actually engage the observer directly. In short, a cybernetic sculpture was required. To create such radically participatory works, he understood, would require that he draw on his engineering skills rather than suppress them, as he had been trying to do in his period of oil painting.”

Sam Hunter (1923–2014) American art historian

Source: The Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai Wen-Ying, 1989, p. 67