Quotes about stand (4908 quotes, page 16)

“In the evening I study a fair.... if you could see the pomp and luxury of the merry-go-round and the stands and booths. Everything is decorated in Baroque-style, all gold and silver; there are mirrors, fabrics, and electric lightning. By night the whole thing is fantastic and rowdy. First of all I shall make a small picture and some drawings for illustrations.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

quote c. 1900, in: Giacomo Balla (1871 – 1951), ed. Fagiolo dell'Arco, exh. catalogue, Galleria Nationale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, 1971
Balla studied a fair for his later painting ' Luna park in Paris https://www.wikiart.org/en/giacomo-balla/luna-park-par-s-1900,' he painted in 1900

Study , Drawing , Night

“All your life you had to stand in line
Still you’re standing on your feet.
All your choices made you change your mind
Now your calendar's complete.
Don't wait for answers
Just take your chances
Don't ask me why.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Don't Ask Me Why.
Song lyrics, Glass Houses (1980)

Life , Change , Chance , Waiting

“Far too often, Christians have accepted the common secular view that we are the masters of animals, their rulers or owners — utterly forgetting that the dominion promised to humanity is a deputized dominion, in which we are to stand before creation as God's vice-regents, putting into effect not our own egotistical wants but God's own law of love and mercy. And yet, when one begins to challenge our despotic treatment of animals — whether killing for sport, the ruthless export trade, or (to take the latest example) the quite obscene slaughter of thousands of seals for their penises, to be sold as aphrodisiacs in Europe and Asia — again and again, one has to face this humanistic dogma: If it benefits humanity, it must be right.”

Andrew Linzey (1952) British theologian and divine

Source: Animal Gospel: Christian Faith as if Animals Mattered (1998), p. 12

Love , God , Law , Sport

“I started looking into these groups in America, campaigns groups who want to put stickers on the front of all school science text books saying that Evolution is only one possible theory of life on earth. Now, although this seems like a stupid idea at first, second, and thirty ninth glance, look at it once more. Give it that fortieth view. Because it's brilliant. Let's have stickers on the front of all books! Slap one on the front of the Bible saying "Of course this could all be bullsh*t. Maybe he never died! Perhaps he opened a donkey sanctuary. He had a clear bond with donkeys." Or slap one on the Theory of Gravity! "Look, that's just one man's opinion. Maybe we could all fly! R. Kelly believed it so. Why would he lie to us? What does he possibly stand to gain?"”

John Oliver (1977) English comedian

John Oliver: Terrifying Times (2008)

Life , Lie , Books , Stupidity

“When told by a constituent that he would rather vote for the devil, Wilkes responded: "Naturally." He then added: "And if your friend decides against standing, can I count on your vote?"”

John Wilkes (1725–1797) English journalist and politician

Nature

“Alas! that Christians should stand at the door of eternity having more work upon their hands than their time is sufficient for, and yet be filling their heads and hearts with trifles.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 255.

Time , Heart

“Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor.
In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years.
We now crush it.
In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself.
Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 74) - Speech given before the destruction of the nuclear-armed satellite Circum-Terra.

Men , People , Stupidity , Light

“The subject of blasphemy is a difficult one for modern man to understand. Modern man regards the whole subject as obsolete and irrelevant. He does not want to consider it. I do not know of any sermons that have been preached on blasphemy. They are no doubt quite infrequent if not rare. Even Christians, churchmen, have surrendered the subject of blasphemy because when you seek to establish a retreatist position, you constantly jettison one doctrine after another as excess baggage. I’ve actually heard some people claim, many people claim that they do not want to make a stand on abortion or on homosexuality or on a number of doctrines of scripture because they feel that what must be defended is the heart of the gospel, John 3:16. They want to preserve rebirth; anything else, they will jettison as long as they can go on begging people to be born again. A retreatist position is a defeatist one.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Blasphemy (n. d.)

People , Feeling , Understanding , Heart

“Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

“Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

God

“598. An empty Sack cannot stand upright.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1740) : An empty bag will not stand upright.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“The result sends a clear message to the powers at Westminster that people have become completely disenfranchised with their politics, and that the politicians have become completely detached from the issues which really concern the working man and woman. I have always believed that Britain is big enough and strong enough to stand on its own two feet, and to truly thrive when freed from the shackles of EU bureaucracy. Now we have the opportunity to prove it.”

Jill Seymour (1958) British politician

Today we celebrate our Independence Day http://jillseymourukip.org/today-we-celebrate-our-independence-day/ (June 24, 2016)

People , Strong

“She turned out to be the wife of a man who was then the prime minister of a major country. I'd heard stories about this lady, but I never thought much of them until that night. We met at the house of the friend who'd phoned me. After we'd all chatted for a while in the living room, the four of us who already knew each other drifted out to the kitchen, leaving Ben and Madame X in the living room to get better acquainted. Which they did. In fact, when we drifted back in, about ten minutes later, she and Ben were involved in an incredibly torrid scene on the couch. I remember standing there and thinking to myself, "Well, Donald, you're not in Queens anymore."”

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

Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990), p. 52
1990s

Thinking , Housing , Night , Country

“It is important to note that humans are a subset of apes, being members of the taxonomic superfamily Hominoidea. This is no arbitrary classification, but one that is objectively verifiable through phylogenetics. This is a fact that can be proven regardless what you would rather believe. Yet no religion either accounts for this fact nor even acknowledges it, as it stands against all their collective mythology.”

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

Patheos, The Cow http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/01/22/the-cow/ (January 22, 2016)

Religion

“If you stand up to people, they'll respect you for it. I had an e-mail from a Cambridge University American law student, and he said, 'You are an evil f------ man,' so I called him up - he put his telephone number on it - and I said, 'I'm going to call the police if I have any more messages like this from you. This is an abusive, threatening letter.' And he invited me to give a lecture. I couldn't do it, but I would have done it if I'd had the time.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

A reporter who thinks objective journalism is a synonym for government mouthpiece http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/02/INGRU2KJHA1.DTL, November 2, 2003
2003

People , Law , Universe , Evil

“Then, does everyone lives in fear?'
The firelight barely reached the huge man standing beside Raskan, and the deep voice that came from that vague shape sounded loose, unguarded. 'I would say, most of the time, yes. Fear that our opinion might be chalanged. Fear that our way of seeing things might be called ignorant, self-serving, or indeed evil. Fear for our persons. Fear for our future, our fate. Our moment of death. Fear of failing in all that we set out to achieve. Fear of being forgotten.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Death , Fate , Fear , Way

“I desire to have both heaven and hell ever in my eye, while I stand on this isthmus of life, between two boundless oceans.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Letter to Charles Wesley
General sources

Life , Hell

“When will American men learn how to stand up to the nagging by the intolerant, uncivil feminists whose sport is to humiliate men?”

Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) American activist

Feminists On The Warpath Get Their Man, Phyllis Schlafly Columns, 2007-03-30, Schlafly, Phyllis, 2005-02-16 http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/feb05/05-02-16.html,

Men , Sport , Learning

“There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feds, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 220.

Love , Wisdom , God , Faith

“The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality.”

Abraham Isaac Kook book Orot

Orot Yisrael, Ch. 5, article 10, p. 156; as quoted in "The Distinction between Jews and Gentiles in Torah" by Rabbi David Bar Chaim http://www.daatemet.org.il/articles/article.cfm?article_id=119&lang=en
Variant:
The dissimilarity between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing vis-à-vis the soul of all the Gentiles — on all of their levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality
As quoted in "A British Synagogue Bans a Famous Hassidic Text!" (February 2010) by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel http://rabbimichaelsamuel.com/2010/02/2744/#_ftn1.
Orot

Soul , Animals

“When you educate someone, you teach them how to use language to arm them, straighten them out, organize them, elevate them and you ennoble them, and then they're not misshapen half-carved blocks of humanity – people that can stand up, stand around and manoeuvre through the world, contribute properly to the community and keep the world oriented between chaos and order.”

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

Biblical Lectures

People , World , Education , Communication

“If we're going to consider failure to comply with UN directives a good reason for wrecking a country with cruise missiles, hey, I can think of a country in the Middle East which is in violation of a lot more UN directives than Iraq is. Israel has consistently thumbed its nose at UN directives, and no one in Washington has ever told Israel, "Comply or get hit." Let's understand one fundamental fact. This crusade against Iraq isn't about the United Nations or international security or stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It's about making the Middle East safe for Israel to continue bullying its neighbors and stealing from them. Every other explanation is lies and hypocrisy. And we really can expect a bigger dose of lies and hypocrisy than usual as the warmongers work to get this war against Iraq started. The media bosses will trot more generals and politicians in front of the TV cameras and have them bluster patriotically about how we're not going to let Saddam Hussein get away with it any longer, by god, and they'll show groups of military personnel cheering when they're told that they're being shipped out to the Persian Gulf to kick Saddam Hussein's behind and keep him from getting away with whatever it is he's getting away with, which mainly seems to be running his country the way he wants to instead of the way the United Nations tells him. They will work overtime at convincing the couch potatoes and the mindless yahoos who like to wave flags and shout patriotic slogans that destroying Iraq really is an act of American patriotism. And as long as the number of Americans killed in a Jewish war against Iraq remains small, the flag-waving yahoos and the bought politicians ought to be able to drown out any dissent from Americans like me who believe that we don't have any reasonable justification for waging such a war. And keeping casualties small ought to be easy, so long as it remains strictly a high-tech war, with us launching missiles against defenseless targets from many miles away. Of course, sometimes wars get out of hand, and unexpected things happen. If the Jews manage to get Iran involved in the war also -- and that's what they really want to do, what they really need to do -- then I think we stand a pretty good chance of seeing some major terrorist activity in the United States. I know that if I were Osama bin Laden, I'd have been spending my time getting ready for just such a development ever since Bill Clinton blew up that pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. I'd be putting my teams into place in the United States, assembling materials, choosing targets, and waiting for the Jews to provide justification for me to begin killing Americans on a significant scale. Of course, whether Osama bin Laden is as resourceful and as capable as he's said to be remains to be seen. Personally, I have very little faith in the ability of these flea-bitten Muslims to get things done. But we'll see.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts.
1990s, 1990

God , War , Faith , Way

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”

Noah Webster (1758–1843) lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, writer, editor and author

An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (1787).

People , Jealousy , Law , Appearance

“Then there's the law that any person found carrying a Swanhook, the same being neither a Swanherd in good standing nor accompanied by two certified Swanherds, or Swannerds (or Swanners, or Swanmasters), of known probity, should cough up thirteen shillings fourpence, three shillings fourpence going to the informer and the rest to the King. This looked like a fine bit of legislation until it developed that you can't collect from such people. They haven't got it. That's why they're out stealing Swans.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Swan-Upping, Indeed!
How to Attract the Wombat (1949)

People , Law , Personality

“I don't feel that attached to my instruments. It's almost like I'm going to dominate them in some sort of way. I don't feel like they're part of me; they stand between me and something new.”

The Edge (1961) Irish rock musician, guitar player of U2

On being a musician

Way , Feeling , Parting

“I managed to become a member of a government cabinet, of the first Bolshevik cabinet in the years 1917/18. I am also the first woman ever to have been appointed ambassadress, a post which I occupied for three years and from which I resigned of my own free will. This may serve to prove that woman certainly can stand above the conventional conditions of the age. The World War, the stormy, revolutionary spirit now prevalent in the world in all areas has greatly contributed to blunting the edge of the unhealthy, overheated double standard of morality. We are already accustomed not to make overly taxing demands, for example, on actresses and women belonging to the free professions in matters relating to their married life. Diplomacy, however, is a caste which more than any other maintains its old customs, usages, traditions, and, above all, its strict ceremonial. The fact that a woman, a "free," a single woman was recognized in this position without opposition shows that the time has come when all human beings will be equally appraised according to their activity and their general human dignity.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Life , Women , War , Age

“Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know. I’m here today because I am gay. And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. I also do it selﬁshly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.”

Ellen Page (1987) Canadian actress

Coming Out Speech (2014)

Love , Pain , People , Health

“Let no one charge us with capricious inconsistency in our actions against Albinus, and let no one think that I am disloyal to this alleged friend or lacking in feeling toward him. 2. We gave this man everything, even a share of the established empire, a thing which a man would hardly do for his own brother. Indeed, I bestowed upon him that which you entrusted to me alone. Surely Albinus has shown little gratitude for the many benefits I have lavished upon him. 3. Now |87 he is collecting an army to take up arms against us, scornful of your valor and indifferent to his pledge of good faith to me, wishing in his insatiable greed to seize at the risk of disaster that which he has already received in part without war and without bloodshed, showing no respect for the gods by whom he has often sworn, and counting as worthless the labors you performed on our joint behalf with such courage and devotion to duty. 4. In what you accomplished, he also had a share, and he would have had an even greater share of the honor you gained for us both if he had only kept his word. For, just as it is unfair to initiate wrong actions, so also it is cowardly to make no defense against unjust treatment. Now when we took the field against Niger, we had reasons for our hostility, not entirely logical, perhaps, but inevitable. We did not hate him because he had seized the empire after it was already ours, but rather each one of us, motivated by an equal desire for glory, sought the empire for himself alone, when it was still in dispute and lay prostrate before all. 5. But Albinus has violated his pledges and broken his oaths, and although he received from me that which a man normally gives only to his son, he has chosen to be hostile rather than friendly and belligerent instead of peaceful. And just as we were generous to him previously and showered fame and honor upon him, so let us now punish him with our arms for his treachery and cowardice. 6. His army, small and island-bred, will not stand against your might. For you, who by your valor and readiness to act on your own behalf have been victorious in many battles and have gained control of the entire East, how can you fail to emerge victorious with the greatest of ease when you have so large a number of allies and when virtually the entire army is here. Whereas they, by contrast, are few in number and lack a brave and competent general to lead them. 7. Who does not know Albinus' effeminate nature? Who does not know that his way |88 of life has prepared him more for the chorus than for the battlefield? Let us therefore go forth against him with confidence, relying on our customary zeal and valor, with the gods as our allies, gods against whom he has acted impiously in breaking his oaths, and let us be mindful of the victories we have won, victories which that man ridicules.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book 3, Chapter 6.

Life , God , Hate , Hostility

“Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.”

William S. Burroughs book Cities of the Red Night

Cities of the Red Night (1981)

Freedom

“Granting, I say that competition has hitherto been the universal law, the last word, of nature, still if only one man should stand up and say, "It shall be so no more," if he should say, "It is not the last word of my nature, and my acts and life declare that it is not," then that so-called law would be at an end.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

England's Ideal: And Other Papers on Social Subjects (1887) p. 54

Life , Law , Nature , Universe

“Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people's lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.”

Geert Hofstede (1928) Dutch psychologist

Source: Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values (1980), p. 51.

People , Birth , Strong , Loyalty

“They looked at me like I was some kind of threat. [Mick] Jagger really tried to put me down, but there was no way some crude, lippy guy was going to do a number on me. I was always able to squelch him. I found out that, if you stand up to Mick, he crumbles.”

Anita Pallenberg (1942–2017) German actress, model and Rolling Stones groupie

On becoming acquainted with the Rolling Stones. As quoted in Up and Down With The Rolling Stones, by Tony Sanchez.

Way , Guy

“Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Endorsement of a letter relating to the Whiskey Ring (29 July 1875).
1870s

Way , Personality

“Design demands a designer. Frogs don’t turn into princes, and “big bangs” make big messes not neat, orderly universes. There are no facts to support evolutionism. It stands royally naked.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Support , Universe

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore (2002)

World , Change , Time

“Even in his palmiest days there were good friends who could stand only limited stretches of the Lambert barrage of ideas, jokes, fantasy, quotations, apt instances, things that had struck him as he walked through London, not because these lacked quality, on the contrary because the mixture was after a while altogether too rich.”

Constant Lambert (1905–1951) British composer and conductor

Anthony Powell Messengers of Day (1978) p. 60.
Criticism

Idea

“We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night tonight
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Star-Splitter
1920s

Way , Night

“One of the consolations of dying… Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

"Jonathan Franzen Warns Ebooks are Corroding Values," http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/30/jonathan-franzen-ebooks-values The Guardian (Jan 30, 2012).

World , Change

“As things now stand, the office is a slightly meaner battleground than the home. Male bosses seem to dominate their women underlings as they would never dominate their wives.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Now That Men Can Cry...," p. 296
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Women , Home

“This is the establishment, chiefly upon Kant's foundations, of a new idealistic philosophy, in extension and fulfilment of Kant's own, though also taking impulse from the views of Aristotle and of Leibnitz. This new idealism seeks to rehabilitate the moral individual in his proper autonomy by seating him in the eternal world; that is, in the self-active, and therefore absolutely real, or noumenal, order of being. It thus stands opposed (1) to the current Monism, whether of Naturalism (Spencer, Haeckel, etc.) or of Absolute Idealism (Hegel and the Neo-Hegelians), and (2) to the older Monotheism, with its dualism (the eternal Creator, the temporal creation) of literal production out of nothing, by miracle”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix A: The Essays in their Systematic Connexion, p.383

World , Nature

“Well, the issue of a standing UN army has been raised by many because, quite frankly, the way we operate today is like telling Ottawa that I know you need a fire station but we will build one when the fire breaks. We have no army. When the crisis breaks then we begin to put an army together. We go around to governments and begin asking for troops. The question with a standing UN army is that it raises issues of budget issues, legal issues, where do you place it, under what jurisdiction? And the big boys, big countries don't want it. The smaller countries are also nervous.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Way , Boy , Question , Country

“Mappo Trell, I believe motivations prove, ultimately, irrelevant. Upon either side of the battlefield the face grins with blunt stupidity, even as smoke fills the sky from horizon to horizon, even as crops whither and die, even as sweet land turns to salt. Inequity ends, Trell, when no-one and no thing is left standing.”

Steven Erikson book The Bonehunters

The Bonehunters (2006)

Stupidity , Motivation

“Conservatives have, on the whole, accepted nationality as a sphere of local duties and loyalties, defining an inheritance and a community that has a right to pass on its values from generation to generation. The nation may indeed be the best that we now have, by way of a society linking the dead to the unborn, in the manner extolled by Burke. And for this very reason it arouses the hostility of liberals, who are constantly searching for a place outside loyalty and obedience, from which all human claims can be judged. Hence, in the conflicts of our times, while conservatives leap to the defense of the nation and its interests, wishing to maintain its integrity and to enforce its law, liberals advocate transnational initiatives, international courts, and doctrines of universal rights, all of which, they believe, should stand in judgment over the nation and hold it to account.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"The Limits of Liberty," http://spectator.org/42528_back-basics/ The American Spectator (December 2008).

Hostility , Law , Way , Search

“Those who dumb down the news, trivialize the news with in-studio shouting matches passing for debate, those who tart up the news with celebrity gossip, scandal and sensationalism are playing right into the hands of those that stand to gain the most from the news being seen as irrelevant and trivial and no more or less worth your attention than the next episode of 'American Idol.' […] I worry that if it becomes no more than a reality show, something that could be scripted and rigged behind the scenes without anyone really getting upset about it, that our freedom of the press will become another one of those constitutionally granted rights that can be watered down and eventually taken away from us.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

Speech 3 February 2011 at San Antonio College, as quoted in Jeanne Jakle, "Rather warns media is in 'state of crisis'" http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Rather-warns-media-is-in-state-of-crisis-995904.php, San Antonio Express-News, 4 February 2011.

Reality , Freedom , Water

“Out security agencies work with each other and with others around the globe to track people who are threats to Canada and to watch threats that may evolve. I think though, this is not a time to commit sociology, if I can use an expression. It’s time to treat this- these things are serious threats. Global terrorist attacks, people who have agendas of violence—deep and abiding threats to all the values that our society stands for.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

In response to an alleged plot to attack a VIA Rail passenger train, Toronto Star, April 25, 2013, http://www.thestar.com/news/2013/04/25/stephen_harper_terror_threats_are_no_time_for_apos_sociology_apos_.html
2013

People , Thinking , Time

“Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space—
In Twilight-land—in No-man’s land—
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.

“And who are you?” cried one, agape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
“I know not,” said the second Shape,
“I only died last night.””

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Identity; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Light , Night

“Stand us against a wall and shoot us, well and good, you are victors. But why should I be brought before a Tribunal like a c-c-c-… I can't even get the word [criminal] out!”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

To G.M. Gilbert. Quoted in Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth - Page 573 - by Gitta Sereny - History - 1996

“I would like my books to stand as a tool to unbind children from expectations of poetry because it should free the child to self-expression and exploration.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On why she writes http://www.burbankleader.com/entertainment/tn-blr-masielalusha-20101027,0,7134384.story/

Children , Books

“The master of a private dwelling will not allow any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in the house, such as a couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels of price thrown away into dirty corners, while those which serve ignobler uses are thrust forward for entering guests to see. He has everything arranged neatly and in the proper place, where it stands to most advantage; and then he can welcome his guests, without any misgivings that he need be ashamed of opening the interior of his house to receive them. The same duty, I take it, is incumbent on that master of our "tabernacle," the mind; it has to arrange everything within us, and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator has fashioned to be our implement or our vessel, to fitting and noble uses.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 18

Soul , Fashion , Housing

“If we ask what it is he [ George Orwell] stands for, … the answer is: the virtue of not being a genius, of fronting the world with nothing more than one’s simple, direct, undeceived intelligence, and a respect for the powers one does have. … He communicates to us the sense that what he has done any one of us could do. Or could do if we but made up our mind to do it, if we but surrendered a little of the cant that comforts us, if for a few weeks we paid no attention to the little group with which we habitually exchange opinions, if we took our chance of being wrong or inadequate, if we looked at things simply and directly, having in mind only our intention of finding out what they really are, not the prestige of our great intellectual act of looking at them. He liberates us. He tells us that we can understand our political and social life merely by looking around us; he frees us from the need for the inside dope. He implies that our job is not to be intellectual, certainly not to be intellectual in this fashion or that, but merely to be intelligent according to our own lights—he restores the old sense of the democracy of the mind, releasing us from the belief that the mind can work only in a technical, professional way and that it must work competitively. He has the effect of making us believe that we may become full members of the society of thinking men. That is why he is a figure for us.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

“George Orwell and the politics of truth,” The Opposing Self (1950), pp. 156-158
The Opposing Self (1950)

Life , Men , World , Way

“We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

People , Time

“Standing outside a factory farm, the first question that comes to mind is not a moral but a practical one: Where is everybody? Where are the owners, the farmers, the livestock managers, the extra hands, anybody? I have been driving around the North Carolina countryside on a Thursday afternoon in January 2001, pulling in at random to six hog farms, and have yet to find a single farmer or any other living soul. … There are so many factory farms around here that they are easy to miss. I doubt that the average visitor just passing through even knows what they are …”

Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter

Dominion (2002)

Soul , Question

“Say, ‘This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.’ That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by someone else, I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creators of your own destiny. All the strength and success you want is within ourselves.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Strong , Suffering , Success

“If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth?”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 22–23
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real

Truth , Religion , Star , Personality

“Badlands, you gotta live it everyday.
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay.
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Badlands"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Heart

“These same interior, enlightened persons Have the love of God before them in their inward vision Whenever they want, as drawing or calling in towards unity. For they see and feel that the Father with the Son by means of the Holy Spirit stand embraced with all the elect and are brought back with eternal love into the unity of their nature. This unity is constantly drawing or calling in all that has been born out of it naturally or by grace. And therefore these enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason to a bare vision devoid of images (The imageless place of spirit vision). There lives the eternal invitation of God’s unity, and with imageless naked understanding they go beyond all works and all practices and all things to the summit of their spirit. There their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love just as iron is penetrated by the fire. And the bare elevated memory finds itself caught and established In a fathomless absence of images. Thus the created image is united threefold wise above reason to its eternal image, Which is the source of its being and of its life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love , Life , God , People

“Eighteen centuries have passed since the Bible was finished. They have been centuries of great changes. In their course the world has been wrought over into newness at almost every point. But, to-day, the text of the Scriptures, after copyings almost innumerable and after having been tossed about through ages of ignorance and tumult, is found by exhaustive criticism to be unaltered in every important particular — there being not a single doctrine, nor duty, nor fact of any grade, that is brought into question by variations of readings — a fact that stands alone in the history of such ancient literature.”

Enoch Fitch Burr (1818–1907) American astronomer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 35.

Age , World , History , Literature

“I'll take the shooting. I'm used to that. I've been shot a few times in the past, and I guess I can stand it, again.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Remarks to the judge after being found guilty of murder (1915-07-08), as quoted in Philip Foner, The Case of Joe Hill (International Publishers Co., 1966, ISBN 0-717-80022-9, 127 pages), p. 49. Under Utah law, he was allowed a choice of being shot or hanged.

Time , Past

“It stands to the Party’s credit that millions upon millions of Soviet men of every nation and nationality have adopted internationalism—once the ideal of a handful of Communists—as their deep conviction and standard of behaviour. This was a true revolution in social thinking, and one which it is hard to overestimate.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Fundamentals of Political Science http://leninist.biz/en/1975/FPS559/3.1-The.Dawn.of.a.New.Era-

Men , Thinking

“Am I a gangster or a murderer?
Of what crime do I stand
Condemned? I made the whole world weep
At the beauty of my land.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

Selected Poems (1983), Nobel Prize

World , Beauty

“No-one becomes a terrorist from a standing start. It starts with a process of radicalisation. When you look in detail at the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were first influenced by what some would call non-violent extremists.”

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

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

“I feel that segregation is totally unchristian, and that it is against everything the Christian religion stands for.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

In his letter to Sally Canada (19 September 1956), as quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr (1992), by Carson & Holloran, Volumes 2-3, p. 373
1950s

Religion , Feeling

“It is remarkably difficult to avoid falling under the spell of our own intellectual heritage. As we analyse and reflect on our normative concepts, it is easy to become bewitched into believing that the ways of thinking about them bequeathed to us by the mainstream of our intellectual traditions must be the ways of thinking about them. … The history of philosophy, and perhaps especially of moral, social and political philosophy, is there to prevent us from becoming too readily bewitched. The intellectual historian can help us to appreciate how far the values embodied in our present way of life, and our present ways of thinking about those values, reflect a series of choices made at different times between different possible worlds. This awareness can help to liberate us from the grip of any one hegemonal account of those values and how they should be interpreted and understood. Equipped with a broader sense of possibility, we can stand back from the intellectual commitments we have inherited and ask ourselves in a new spirit of enquiry what we should think of them.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), pp. 116-117

Life , World , Way , History

“Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
with Dirce in the boat conveyed,
Lest Charon, seeing her, forget,
That he is old and she a shade.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Epitaph on Dirce - George Orwell called it 'one of the best epitaphs in English - If I were a woman it would be my favourite epitaph-it would be the one I should like to have for myself." - quoted in Orwell:Collected Works, It is What I Think, p. 45.

Forgetting

“He ordered us to stand fast and save Stalingrad. So we knew then that it was 'do or die.' We could not retreat.”

Vasily Chuikov (1900–1982) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Unconditional Surrender" - Page 139 - by Everett Holles - 1945

“Okay, Ed, now I've gotten the ice. When are you gonna stand up to McCarthy?”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

Challenging a reluctant Murrow to take on Senator Joseph McCarthy on his new television show See It Now (1953 or 1954), as quoted in A.M. Sperber's Murrow: His Life and Times.

“I was a bad kid. I say this without pride but with a feeling that it is better to say it. I live with one great hope: to help kids who now stand where I stood as a boy. If what I have to say here helps even one of them avoid some of my own mistakes, or take heart from such triumphs as I have had, this book will serve its purpose.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Opening paragraph from The Babe Ruth Story (1948) by Ruth and Bob Considine; reproduced in "Sports of the Times: The Babe's Own Story" by Arthur Daley, in The New York Times (April 26, 1948), p. 30

Books , Hope , Feeling , Boy

“We stand for lower, simpler, fairer taxes, not great big new taxes that damage Australia's economy, not great big new taxes that are yet another hit on the cost of living of struggling Australian families.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

2010

Family

“No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 132
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Age , Parent

“I plan to send my liver somewhere in France, to protest foie gras (liver pate) … I plan to have handbags made from my skin … and an umbrella stand made from my seat.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

During the hoof and mouth disease outbreak in Europe
speaking to onMilwaukee.com, 2005 February 1
2005

“The German Youth Movement started quite inconspicuously: a band of secondary schoolboys in Berlin, bored to death by their homes and schools and grown-ups in general, sought to elude this adult world by spending their Sundays and holidays roaming the countryside - what we call hiking, an unheard of pursuit in those days…Hiking became symbolic, standing for Back to Nature against modern civilization; the free-lance spirit as against gregariousness, yet, paradoxically, the urge for comradeship against atomizing individualism…In 1933 the Nazis swallowed up the groups on the nationalistic fringe and shattered the bulk of the Bünde as bulwarks of the individualistic and independent spirit…Today, I suppose, for many of its former members the Youth Movement represents no more than a store of youthful memories. But a small but by no means negligible minority did receive a basic shaping and moulding which held good for the rest of their lives, the essence of that fleeting spirit of the Movement: a shared vision of the true nature of man and his place in the universe,…; a special kind of awareness to Nature; an extremely keen sense of intellectual and spiritual responsibility and a peculiar sanity and sobriety of judgment. This is quite a lot to be thankful for.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Appendix, Broken Lights Diaries and Letters 1951-1959.

Death , Youth , World , School

“Great Negative, how vainly would the Wise
Enquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise,
Didst thou not stand to point their dull Philosophies?Is, or is not, the Two great Ends of Fate,
And, true or false, the Subject of Debate,
That perfect, or destroy, the vast Designs of Fate.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

Upon Nothing, ll. 28–33.
Other

Fate , Perfection , Falseness

“SPAN ID=The_process_by>The process by means of which human beings can arbitrarily make certan things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Whenever two or more human beings can communicate with each other, they can, by agreement, make anything stand for anything. For example, here are two symbols:
X Y
We can agree to let X stand for buttons and Y for bows; then we can freely change our agreement and let X stand for […] North Korea, and Y for South Korea. We are, as human beings, uniquely free to manufacture and manipulate and assign values to our symbols as we please. Indeed, we can go further by making symbols that stand for symbols. […] This freedom to create symbols of any assigned value and to create symbols that stand for symbols is essential to what we call the symbolic process. </SPAN”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Symbolic Process, p. 24

Communication , Freedom , Change

“My main statement in that it does not really matter if you believe that this world, or any of its features, is new or not. My analysis stands by itself. This is our world, the world of the Information age. And this is my analysis of this world, which must be understood, used, judged, by itself, by its capacity, or incapacity, to identify and explain the phenomena that we observe and experience, regardless of its newness.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Rise of the Network Society, 1996, p. 376 as cited in: Jari Peltola (2006)

Age , World

“No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself.”

Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949) Bulgarian politician

Ch. 1, The Class Character of Fascism https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm#s2.
The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism

“I was like a gravedigger while I painted these corpses [of the dead Baader-Meinhoff members]. It was just work. If I felt one of them looked too theatrical, I painted over it… I was afraid more of the reaction on the left than the right. It was still very dangerous to deal with this subject in Germany. There was fear that the museum where I showed them might be bombed. All my friends were on the left, but I was not. They said: 'Someone with the right mentality could do this, but not Richter - he is too bourgeois. He steals Baader-Meinhof away from us.' To me, they were part of the problem. I was standing outside watching how people, on both sides [left / right], ignored the truth because of their beliefs, beliefs that made them crazy. That was the point of the pictures.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

In 1988, Richter painted a series of 15 works titled 'October 18, 1977.' It shocked Germany, especially left. The series was based on photographs of the anti-capitalist Baader-Meinhof group, which called itself the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction) and were in prison and died in 1977.
after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

People , Truth , Fear , Problem

“Interestingly, Islam acknowledges the reality of sin and hell, and the justice of God, but the hope it offers is that sinners can escape God’s justice if they do religious works. God will see these, and because of them, hopefully he will show mercy—but they won’t know for sure. Each person’s works will be weighed on the Day of Judgment and it will then be decided who is saved and who is not—based on whether they followed Islam, were sincere in repentance, and performed enough righteous deeds to outweigh their bad ones. So Islam believes you can earn God’s mercy by your own efforts. That’s like jumping out of the plane and believing that flapping your arms is going to counter the law of gravity and save you from a 10,000-foot drop. And there’s something else to consider. The Law of God shows us that the best of us is nothing but a wicked criminal, standing guilty and condemned before the throne of a perfect and holy Judge. When that is understood, then our “righteous deeds” are actually seen as an attempt to bribe the Judge of the Universe. The Bible says that because of our guilt, anything we offer God for our justification (our acquittal from His courtroom) is an abomination to Him, and only adds to our crimes. Islam, like the other religions, doesn’t solve your problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

God , Religion , Justice , Law

“We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Death , Fools , Democracy , Communication

“Behind the top hats, a little lady wearing lila-coloured tights was balancing on a tightrope in the middle of all that blue-grey tobacco-laden air. I sauntered in among the standing clientele. I was on the lookout for an attractive girl. Yes – that one wasn’t bad. When she became aware of my gaze her facial expression changed to that of a frozen mask and she stared emptily into space. I found a stair – and collapsed into it – tired and listless. Everyone clapped. The Lila-clad tightrope-walker curtsied, smiled and disappeared. A group of Romanian singers took her place. There was love and hate – and longing and reunion – and lovely dreams – and that soft music melting together with the colours. The melted notes became green palm trees and steely blue water floating in the blue haze of the room. An artwork is a crystal. A crystal has a soul and a mind, and the artwork must also have these.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

a note of Munch, written in Ekely, 1929; Munch Museum
1896 - 1930

Love , Hate , Smile , Dreams

“Some may wish to argue that Hayek was simply born with a sort of natural pessimism or cynicism, and that this generated his long standing belief in the inherent limitations that humans face when they try to intervene in social phenomena. Perhaps. But it is also possible that this view was the product of his having come of age during the final collapse of an already broken-down empire, of having experienced the multiple forms of disaster that surrounded postwar Vienna and enveloped interwar central Europe, and of having witnessed the failures of various high-minded social experiments to achieve anything like what their exponents had promised. In bearing witness to so much tragedy Hayek was again very much a part of the larger Austrian tradition. His famed ‘‘epistemic pessimism’’ may well have been another result of that larger experience.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

"Hayek and the Austrian tradition", in Edward Feser(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Age , Failure , Nature , Parting

“I can't mention, I'm sorry to say, any Arab leader… Where is the… Nasser? Where is the Arab leader who will stand up and tell these people the truth? This is what we are waiting for.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Interview on Abu Dhabi TV http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP91805, June 1, 2005

People , Truth , Waiting

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men , God , Children , World

“Give us a man, young or old, high or low, on whom we know we can thoroughly depend — who will stand firm when others fail — the friend faithful and true, the adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and chivalrous; in such an one there is a fragment of the Rock of Ages — a sign that there has been a prophet amongst us.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 352.

Age , Faith , Dependency

“In regard to creeds and faiths, the condition is no better, and no worse. Differences both as to race and to religion are evidently more likely to increase than to diminish. We stand between the populous shores of two great oceans. Our land is capable of supporting one-fifth of all the globe. Here, labor is abundant and better renumerated than any where else. All moral, social and geographical causes conspire to bring to us the peoples of all other over populated countries.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

People , Faith , Religion , Support

“Several implications follow from Hayek's insights into the nature of capitalism.(a) The claim "I deserve my pretax income" is not generally true. Nor should the basic organization of property rules be based on considerations of moral desert. Hence, claims about desert have no standing in deciding whether taxation for the purpose of funding social insurance is just.
(b) The claim that people rocked by the viccisitudes of the market, or poor people generally, are getting what they deserve is also not generally true. To moralize people's misfortunes in this way is both ignorant and mean. Capitalism continuously and randomly pulls the rug out from under even the most prudent and diligent people. It is in principle impossible for even the most prudent to forsee all the market turns that could undo them. (If it were possible, then efficient socialist planning would be possible, too. But it isn't.)
(c) Capitalist markets are highly dynamic and volatile. This means that at any one time, lots of people are going under. Often, the consequences of this would be catastrophic, absent concerted intervention to avert the outcomes generated by markets. For example, the economist Amartya Sen has documented that sudden shifts in people's incomes (which are often due to market volatility), and not absolute food shortages, are a principal cause of famine.
(d) The volatility of capitalist markets creates a profound and urgent need for insurance, over and above the insurance needs people would have under more stable (but stagnant) economic systems. This need is increased also by the fact that capitalism inspires a love of personal independence, and hence brings about the smaller ("nuclear") family forms that alone are compatible with it. We no longer belong to vast tribes and clans. This sharply reduces the ability of individuals under capitalism to pool risks within families, and limits the claims they can effectively make on nonhousehold (extended) family members for assistance. To avoid or at least ameliorate disaster and disruption, people need to pool the risks of capitalism.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

Love , People , Family , Food

“The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

On trying to understand Soviet policies, as quoted in The Wise Men (1986) by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas

Pleasure

“Until Roy Hattersley said he would shoot himself if I became prime minister, I had not been able to see any possible advantage in standing.”

Roy Hattersley (1932) British Labour Party politician, published author and journalist

John Reid in his speech to the Labour Party conference in Manchester, 28 September 2006. BBC News 28 September 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5388112.stm
About

“In the season of white wild roses
We two went hand in hand:
But now in the ruddy autumn
Together already we stand.”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

"A Song of Spring and Autumn".

Autumn , Season

“Authentic Christians are persons who stand apart from others. Their character seems deeper, their ideas fresher, their spirit softer, their courage greater, their leadership stronger, their concerns wider, their compassion more genuine and their convictions more concrete.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Idea , Courage , Personality

“It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: The End of Our Time (1919), p. 34

Life , Law , Beauty , Nature

“At first flash of Eden, We race down to the sea.
Standing there on Freedom's shore.
Waiting for the sun…”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"Waiting for the Sun" on the album Morrison Hotel (1970)

Freedom , Waiting , Sun , Sea

“The time has passed in America when this party can be the party of compassion and let the executive branch run foreign policy. It won't work. We have to be the party that can stand toe to toe with George W. Bush on national security, as well as the party of compassion.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Democratic candidate debates (9 December 2003)

Time

“Thud. My eyes are open. It is four-thirty in the morning, one morning, and my dry eyes click in their sockets, awake before the birds. There is no light. The eye strains for logic, some play of form. I have been dreaming of wind. The tree outside my window stands silent. I listen to the breathing of the man lying beside me. I know where I am. I am awake. I am alive. Am I tethered to earth only by this fragile breath? A strawful of breath at best. Yet this is the breath that patients beg, their hands gripping the edges of mattresses; this is the breath that wrestles trees, that brings down all the leaves in the Third Act. We know where the car is parked. We know, word-for-word, the texts of plays. We have spoken, in proximity to one another, over years, sentences, hundreds of thousands of sentences—bright, grave, fallible, comic, perishable—perhaps eternal? I don’t know. Where does the wind go? When will the light come? We will have hotcakes for breakfast. How can I protect this...? My church teaches me I cannot. And I believe it. I turn the pillow to its cool side. Then rage fills me, against the cubist necessity of having to arrange myself comically against orthodoxy, against having to wonder if I will offend, against theology that devises that my feeling for him, more than for myself, is a vanity. My brown paradox: The church that taught me to understand love, the church that taught me well to believe love breathes—also tells me it is not love I feel, at four in the morning, in the dark, even before the birds cry. Of every hue and caste am I.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Love , Dreams , Cars , Feeling

“The immediate occasion for alarm is the government's announcement that British contractors for supplying armaments to our armed forces must in future share the work with what are called ‘European firms’, meaning factories situated on the mainland of the European continent. I ask one question, to which I believe there is no doubt about the answer. What would have been the fate of Britain in 1940 if production of the Hurricane and the Spitfire had been dependent upon the output of factories in France? That a question so glaringly obvious does not get asked in public or in government illuminates the danger created for this nation by the rolling stream of time which bears away the generation of 1940, the generation, that is to say, of those who experienced as adults Britain's great peril and Britain’s great deliverance. Talk at Bruges or Luxembourg about not surrendering our national sovereignty is all very well. It means less than nothing when the keys to our national defence are being handed over: an island nation which no longer commands the essential means of defending itself by air and sea is no longer sovereign…The safety of this island nation reposes upon two pillars. The first is the impregnability of its homeland to invasion by air or sea. The second is its ability and its will to create over time the military forces by which the last conclusive battle will be decided. Without our own industrial base of military armament production neither of those pillars will stand. No doubt, with the oceans kept open, we can look to buy or borrow from the other continents; but to depend on the continent of Europe for our arms is suicide.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Birmingham branch of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Association (18 February 1989), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), pp. 49-50
1980s

Fate , Question , Suicide , Time

“I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility?”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 187)

Dreams , Exercises , Parting

“As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of the old-established habits of the people. These, he assured them, were all wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him, he referred the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was in direct communication, and the unseen power invariably assured him that he was right.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 26

People , Communication

“Now I as a painter shall never stand for anything of importance. I feel it utterly... I sometimes regret I did not simply keep to the Dutch palette [of Dutch impressionism ] with its grey tones, and have brushed away at landscapes of Montmartre [in 1886-87] with no ado.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 3 May 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 590), p. 33
1880s, 1889

Feeling