Quotes about start
page 22

“"I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?"
Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel."”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 2, section 2, "Lausicaa"

Imagination

“The two young men turned and they didn't smile because they were Woody Ballinger's two boys, Carl and Sammy, and for one brief instant, there was something in their faces that didn't belong in that atmosphere of joviality and the little move they instinctively made that shielded them behind the others in back of them was involuntary enough to stretch a tight-lipped grin across my face that told them I could know.
Could.
From away back out of the years I got that feeling across my shoulders and up my spine that said things were starting to smell right and if you kept pushing the walls would go down and you could charge in and take them all apart until there was nothing left but the dirt they were made of.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Survival...Zero! (1970)

Men, Smile, Feeling, Boy

“Along the road your steps may stumble
Your thoughts may start to stray
But through it all a heart held humble
Levels and lights your way.”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

Along the Road.
Song lyrics, Phoenix (1979)

Way, Light, Heart

“In this way things, external objects, are assimilated to more or less ordered motor schemas, and in this continuous assimilation of objects the child's own activity is the starting point of play. Not only this, but when to pure movement are added language and imagination, the assimilation is strengthened, and wherever the mind feels no actual need for accommodating itself to reality, its natural tendency will be to distort the objects that surround it in accordance with its desires or its fantasy, in short to use them for its satisfaction. Such is the intellectual egocentrism that characterizes the earliest form of child thought.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Nature

“A distant destination austerely reached rarely compensates for a loved starting-point forever lost.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 115

Love, Distant

“There are so many things to paint in the world – in the cities – so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make. To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting. The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

What sympathy is demanded of the viewer! He is asked to 'see' the future links
1961 - 1980, ARTnews Annual', October 1966

World, Art, Soul, Understanding

“The Reform party is very much a modern manifestation of the Republican movement in Western Canada; the U. S. Republicans started in the western United States.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988) Fiction

Life, Men, Hope, Sleep

“I remember one clear example of the problem of communicating what is to be learned. You may have heard of or gone through a similar experience with a student or your child. Years ago, the child of a friend whom I was visiting arrived home from his day at school, all excited about something he had learned. He was in the first grade and his teacher had started the class on reading lessons. The child, Gary, announced that he had learned a new word. "That's great, Gary," his mother said. "What is it?" He thought for a moment, then said, "I'll write it down for you." On a little chalkboard the child carefully printed, HOUSE. "That's fine, Gary," his mother said. "What does it say?" He looked at the word, then at his mother and said matter-of-factly, "I don't know."The child apparently had learned what the word looked like — he had learned the visual shape of the word perfectly. The teacher, however, was teaching another aspect of reading — what words mean, what words stand for or symbolize. As often happens, what the teacher had taught and what Gary had learned were strangely incongruent.As it turned out, my friend's son always learned visual material best and fastest, a mode of learning consistently preferred by a number of students. Unfortunately, the school world is mainly a verbal, symbolic world, and learners like Gary must adjust, that is, put aside their best way of learning and learn the way the school decrees. My friend's child, fortunately, was able to make this change, but how many other students are lost along the way?”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.237

World, School, Way, Home

“C is for Cute
A is for Adorable
R is for Ravishing
M is for Gorgeous
E is for Excellent
L is for Lovable
I is for I'm the best!
T is for Talented
A is for "A tap dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian! NOW LET'S START MY WHOLE WONDERFUL SONG ALL OVER AGAIN!”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

The Grim Grotto (2004)

Dance, Princess

“Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Aliens Cause Global Warming (2003)

War, Truth, Science

“Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment. Here we have the first internal inconsistency of contemporary atheism: it proclaims that all religion must necessarily vanish away, and it is itself a religious phenomena.”

Jacques Maritain book The Range of Reason

The Range of Reason (1952). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 106.

Faith, Religion

“If I could start my life all over again, I would be a professional football player. And you damn well better belive I'd be a Pittsburgh Steeler.”

Jack Lambert (1952) American football player

In his Hall of Fame induction speech. http://www.profootballhof.com/multimedia/inductions/2010/7/6/jack-lamberts-enshrinement-speech/

Life, Football

“It is much easier to prejudge than to judge. It saves a lot of work to write about all the intellectual baggage one brings to the work. It is harder, even somewhat daunting, to start from scratch with what one is actually hearing. Actually it is not easy at all to make judgements in this field without falling back on preconceived categories. Comparisons often come to the rescue. Stokowski’s Scheherazade is without question an extremely effective, almost magical, performance. If I’m reviewing that work I must know outstanding performances like Stokowski’s. And I must know why it’s outstanding—I must know it by listening to it, not merely by reputation. I must compare the newcomer to it to see if he manages to make as much of the music.”

Donald Vroon (1942) American music critic

Music, Question

“Looking back now toward the start
You said you thought I'd lost my path
And I asked if you still considered love an art
And you said " No, I think it's more a craft"
And I just turned and laughed
I just had to turn and laugh.”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

Hearts and Crafts.
Song lyrics, Portrait - The Music of Dan Fogelberg (1997)

Love, Art, Quotes, Thinking

“Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet magazine. I think of it as my own personal bride's disease.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Crazy Salad Plus Nine (1984)

Disease, Thinking, Personality

“…and that we were now those guys…who started a fight at a Harry Potter book party.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

Nantucket Sucks http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/nantucket_sucks.phtml#675, The Tucker Max Stories

Books, Guy, Fight

“Starting from 1993 in Otaru, Hokkaidō, and now running unchecked throughout Japan, signs saying 'Japanese Only' have gone up, making an unspoken undercurrent of fear of the outsider into clear, present, and brazen exclusionism — following the best traditions of segregation and apartheid.”

Debito Arudou (1965) Author/activist with Japanese citizenship born in the USA

"The Rogues' Gallery: Photos of Places in Japan which Exclude or Restrict non-Japanese Customers," http://www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html Debito.Org (last revised November 2007)

Fear

“The writer, and co-laborers, proclaimed the fact of the Lord's presence, demonstrating it from prophecy, and on charts or tables, such as are used in this book, until the fall of 1878, when arrangements were made for starting our present publication, ZION'S WATCH TOWER, and Herald of Christ's Presence. By the Lord's blessing, millions of copies of this publication have carried abroad the tidings that the time is fulfilled, and that the Kingdom of Christ is even now being set up, while the kingdoms and systems of men are crumbling to their utter destruction.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 93.

Men, Books, Time, Christ

“I came to MIT from Harvard University, where I was a lecturer. I had been at the Harvard Psychoacoustic Laboratory during World War II and stayed on at Harvard as a lecturer, mainly doing research, but also a little bit of teaching—statistics and physiological psychology—subjects like that.
Then there came a time that I thought that I had better go pay attention to my career. I had just been having a marvelous time there. I am not a good looker for jobs; I just came to the nearest place I could, which was in our city. I arranged to come down here and start up a psychology section, which we hoped would eventually become a psychology department. For the purposes of having a base of some kind I was in the Electrical Engineering Department. I even taught a little bit of electrical engineering.
I fell in love with the summer study process that MIT had. They had one on undersea warfare and overseas transport—a thing called Project Hartwell. I really liked that. It was getting physicists, mathematicians—everybody who could contribute—to work very intensively for a period of two or three months. After Hartwell there was a project called Project Charles, which was actually two years long (two summers and the time in between). It was on air defense. I was a member of that study. They needed one psychologist and 20 physicists. That led to the creation of the Lincoln Laboratory. It got started immediately as the applied section of the Research Laboratory for Electronics, which was already a growing concern at MIT.”

J. C. R. Licklider (1915–1990) American psychologist and computer scientist

Licklider in: " An Interview with J. C. R. LICKLIDER http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107436/1/oh150jcl.pdf" conducted by William Aspray and Arthur Norberg on 28 October 1988, Cambridge, MA.

Love, War, World, Hope

“The starting point is that one is interested in the universe, one observes that one is finite and that this is intolerable. One has a limited time and apparently limited capacity with which to find anything out. Therefore it is possible to despair. There are many orders of despair, and none of them are known to normal psychology. This is demonstrated by the fact that it has not become existential. Normal psychology will never devalue anything. Existential psychology, at least to a certain point, consists of exploiting the recoil from the despair of finiteness. The recoil is a drive with at least the instinctive immediacy of the survival instinct. There is no point in saying, 'What is there to do? What could such a drive possibly tend towards?”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The survival instinct tends to prolong life. The fundamental drive tends to inform itself about the universe.
Advice to Clever Children (1981)

Life, Universe, Time, Despair

“…the Dulcibella had begun to move in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some faint send of the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an uneasy dreamer.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 35.

Sleep, Sea

“Although teaching in the class is so terribly tiring... I continued my work perfunctorily in a way that nobody could notice it. Because I lived with that firm intention: in a few years I will start painting. And I saved for this by being as sober as possible with everything.”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson:) Al is dat klassikale lesgeven ook zóó vermoeiend.. ..ik zette mijn werk plichtmatig voort, zodat wel niemand 't aan mij kon merken. Want ik leefde op het vaste voornemen: over eenige jaren ga ik schilderen. En daar spaarde ik voor, door in alles zoo sober mogelijk te wezen.
Source: 1900 - 1922, Onder de Menschen: Suze Robertson' (1912), p. 31

Way, Painting

“I’m going out of my mind, oh, oh; with a pain that stops and starts; like a corkscrew to my heart; Ever since we’ve been apart”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), You're a Big Girl Now

Pain, Heart

“[Lloyd George] had always felt that they thought that in him they had a kindred spirit. That was true. Their great men were the men he admired; some of their greatest men were the men from whom he had drawn inspiration, notably Abraham Lincoln. The next day he was to start on a journey to see a country which he regarded as the great miracle of the West, where man had risen from the dead past to a new hope.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the American Society in London at the Savoy Hotel, London (28 September 1923) before his tour of the United States, quoted in The Times (29 September 1923), p. 6
Later life

Men, Hope, Past, Dead

“I had his poster on my wall. He had me moonwalking around my bedroom. I'd love to have written any Michael Jackson song, so maybe start with one of the greatest.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

As quoted in "Soundtrack of my life" (1 October 2015), by Gavin Haynes, NME, p. 48

Love

“Take care for purity in the paint and not so stinky thick of grease, thin, thin, thin! And just on the light [parts in the painting] here and there a small push of thick [paint].... thick house-interiors are unpleasant - long drawing before you start and arrange pleasantly together all things before you start to paint - if the money does not bother you, it is always useful to visit Rott. [Rotterdam].”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls' brief, in het Nederlands): Zorg voor zuiverheid in de verf en niet zoo stinkerig dik van smeerderij, dun, dun, dun, en zo op het licht hier en daar een zetje dik[ke verf].. ..dikke binnenhuizen zijn onaangenaam - lang teekenen voor je begint en het prettig bij elkaar arrangeren voor gij aan het verwen gaat - als het geld u niet begroot, is het altijd nuttig om eens naar Rott. [Rotterdam!?] te gaan. Quote of a letter by Jozef Israels to painter David de la Mar, 1867; as cited in Mythen van het Atelier, ed. Mayken Jonkman & Eva Geudeker; d'jonge Hond, Zwolle/The Hague, 2010 – ISBN 9789089102065 ( source online http://delamar.bntours.nl/!mad1832-bronnen.html) Israels' painting technique did develop only rather slowly. In 1867 he still gave this rather traditional academic advice to the young painter nl:David de la Mar Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Money, Light, Parting, Drawing

“The world didn’t stop because we weren’t in it anymore; far from it. Night after night tiny bodies fell to the ground on our TV screen: black people, young people, Vietnamese people, poor people—some dead, some only bashed up for the moment. There were always more of them to replace the fallen and join them the next night. Then came the period when people we knew—not knew personally, but knew of—started falling to the ground: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. Was that more alarming? Lisa said it was natural. “They gotta kill them,” she explained. “Otherwise it’ll never settle down.””

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

People, World, Nature, Personality

“To undress is the dress code these days and I didn't start it. We are all voyeurs, so why the complaints? Until girls don't walk in a swimsuit on the stage they don't get the crown so why is everyone so holier-than-thou?”

Mallika Sherawat (1976) Indian actress

[The Babe with Balls, http://www.binabakshi.com/journalism.htm, Bina Bakshi, May 2004]

Girl

“I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle —
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.”

Edgar Lee Masters book Fiddler Jones

Fiddler Jones

Life, Memory, Dance

“From the start, the prose in my Hank books copied the storytelling techniques of ranchers and cowboys, which means it was heavily influenced by an oral tradition. It was a natural and easy step to move from reading my stories aloud to audiences in Perryton, to recording them in a studio in Amarillo. The Hank audios have the feel of the radio programs I listened to in the fifties: character voices, background music, and sound effects.”

John R. Erickson (1942) American author

John R. Erickson on the discipline of writing, the world of publishing, and (of course) dogs http://www.lonestarliterary.com/john-r.-erickson-061415.html (June 14, 2015)

Books, Music, Feeling, Nature

“After starting to draw manga, a lot of unexpected things happened, leaving me quite stunned. But it is these sudden events that make life interesting.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Life, Drawing

“From the start, the bourgeois-positivistic fraction of enlightenment was uncomfortable about the unpredictable, subversive dimensions of the new category, the unconscious. With it, the motif of critical self-reflection was introduced into civilization in a way that could not please those who held themselves to be the representatives of civilization. If every ego is underlaid by an unconscious, then that is the end of the self-satisfaction of a consciousness that thinks it knows itself, and thus knows how to value itself. The “unconscious” touched on the cultural narcissism of all social classes.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 50

Way, Thinking

“I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume II, chapter II: "The Growth of the 'Origin of Species' — 1843-1856", page 23 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=39&itemID=F1452.2&viewtype=image; letter http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-729 to J.D. Hooker (11 January 1844) The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

“We want L. A. to be the leading destination for people starting new businesses, and there are no better guides for our efforts than successful entrepreneurs themselves.”

Eric Garcetti (1971) American politician

quoted by Rick Orlov of the Los Angeles Daily News https://www.dailynews.com/2014/05/02/city-of-los-angeles-now-has-entrepreneurs-in-residence/ (May 2, 2014) 2014

People, Business, Effort, Success

“Even when the Earth phases out, sun the diminishes, and everything goes wherever it goes to, the experience of your Knowledge cannot diminish. It is from where even, you might say, eternity starts. It is the source of all sources. It is. It is the experience which is beyond death, beyond creation, beyond anything in this world.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Denver, Colorado, February 25, 1979
1970s

Death, World, Knowledge, Sun

“Then I started to think in Lipp's about when I had first been able to write a story about losing everything. It was up in Cortina d'Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley there after the spring skiing which I had to interrupt to go on assignment to Rhineland and the Ruhr. It was a very simple story called "Out of Season" and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 8

People, Feeling, Spring, Thinking

“I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs. I think, for example, that pi is mysterious enough (don't get me started!) without having to worry about God. Or if pi isn't enough, how about fractals? or quantum mechanics?”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Interview at celebathiests.com (June 1996)

God, Mathematics, Thinking

“When I started going around with Andy people thought I had a press agent. I didn't. After a while I got sort of paranoid about all the publicity, and I holed up in my apartment and cut off the telephone for two months. I saw only two people. Then I felt ready to go out again. I want to do more acting. I like it, but it's hard — the long hours, getting the lines straight, I didn't have to do that with Andy.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

People

“I am very sorry that Andy Coulson has decided to resign as my Director of Communications, although I understand that the continuing pressures on him and his family mean that he feels compelled to do so. Andy has told me that the focus on him was impeding his ability to do his job and was starting to prove a distraction for the Government.”

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

2010s, 2011

Family, Feeling, Communication, Understanding

“Anyone who clings to religion is clinging, not to an arbitrary framework of man's devising, but to the only framework that can serve as a starting-point for the realization of an inward freedom that is independent of terrestrial contingencies.”

Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1896–1982) British rower, agriculturalist and translater

Intellectual Freedom (1971)

Religion, Freedom

“During the April battles the Armenian leadership was completely exposed because they suffered a heavy defeat and did not receive any political support. But, in fact, they relied on that support very much. And when they did not receive that support they, as usual, started to accuse different countries. At the end of the day, they were forced to admit their defeat in the April battles. First, they said that they did not lose the lands. Then they said that these lands are unimportant. Then they said that they will retake these territories. All this is totally untrue. The Armenian leadership has put itself in such a ridiculous situation that Armenia still feels grave consequences of this.”

Ilham Aliyev (1961) 4th President of Azerbaijan from 2003

While receiving a group of servicemen on the anniversary of the April victories of the Azerbaijani army (31 March 2017) http://en.apa.az/nagorno_karabakh/ilham-aliyev-nagorno-karabakh-conflict-is-azerbaijan-s-internal-affair.html Nagorno-Karabakh

Feeling, Support, Suffering, Country

“When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his fingerends. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man’s passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff. The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted— as easily as his mood. Dorothea’s entrance was the freshness of morning.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

World, Soul, Imagination, Mountain

“The best works are often those with the fewest and simplest elements.... until you look at them a little more, and things start to happen.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

As quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 137
1950s

“I thought that the evidence against your claims about me would shame you into changing your behavior. But, five years since you started misrepresenting my role in the founding of Wikipedia, you’re still at it.”

Larry Sanger (1968) American former professor, co-founder of Wikipedia, founder of Citizendium and other projects

"An open letter to Jimmy Wales" Citizendium.org (8 April 2009) http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/08/an-open-letter-to-jimmy-wales-copy/.

Behavior, Change

“The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them till last.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)

Way, Understanding

“The work process begins when I start selecting quotations from a large collection I already have, given that I use such texts often in my work and have for a long time. In fact, appropriation of this kind––along with other kinds––has been part of my work since the beginning in the ’60s. I go through hundreds of these amassed quotes from my own research and that of my staff, make my choices, and then continually add them in relation to the quotes I already have selected. The surplus meaning that is constructed by using the words of others in conjunction with each other, which is my goal, is a far more delicate operation than it may seem.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Joseph Kosuth at artforum.com http://artforum.com/words/id=28992, 09.20.11

Quotes, Time, Parting

“I have travelled across the universe through the years to find her. Sometimes going all the way is just a start…”

Jim Steinman (1947) American musician

Opening caption to the video for "I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That)" (1993)

Way, Travel, Universe

“I’ve never, ever, in my entire life, been upset at a casting choice. I started taping my dad’s auditions when I was 11, when he was auditioning actors for one of his movies. I would see, over and over again, that there wasn’t just one actor for the role. It was really clear that there were a lot of people who could play a character really well, and it would always come down to something kind of weird and non-obvious as to why a person was cast. If you’re not right, you’re not right, but that’s okay.”

Bryce Dallas Howard (1981) American actress

Bryce Dallas Howard https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/bryce-dallas-howard (February 10, 2017)

Life, People, Personality

“In the 1850s and 18605 the modern commodity dealer who purchased directly from the farmer and sold directly to the processor took over the marketing and distribution of agricultural products. In the same years the full-line, full-service wholesaler began to market most standardized consumer goods. Then in the 1 870s and 188os the modern mass retailer — the department store, the mail-order house, and the chain store — started to make inroads on the wholesaler's markets.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 209.

Housing

“Pari pitsaa: A man comes home with some frozen pizzas, but the promise of an amorous moment vanishes when the Formula 1 Race starts on TV.”

Pauli Hanhiniemi (1964) Finnish musician and composer

Home

“The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Universe, Personality

“The conventional Big Bang theory does not say anything about what caused the expansion. It really is only a theory about the aftermath of a bang. In the scientific version of the Big Bang, the universe starts with everything already expanding, with no explanation of how that expansion started… So the Scientific version of the Big Bang theory is not really a theory of a bang, it's really a theory of the aftermath of a bang.”

Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I.
The Early Universe (2012)

Universe

“Life is like this. When I started business 48 years ago as a contractor, I was only looking to survive, cari makan”

Sukanto Tanoto (1949) Indonesian businessman

looking for food Globe Asia Interview, Sep, 2015. http://www.inside-rge.com/Sukanto-Tanoto-Resource-King-GlobeAsia 2015

Life, Food, Business

“The socialist countries must help pay for the development of countries now starting out on the road to liberation.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)

Help, Country

“The most recent campaign [by the “Gay International”] has targeted the Palestinian Authority (PA). The campaign started two years after the eruption of the second intifada. Articles published in the US press, written by Israelis or pro-Jewish activists, claimed that Palestinian “gays” are so oppressed that they could only find refuge in “democratic” Israel. Interviews with such “gay refugees” recounted horrid torture by PA elements. Indeed, the effort was inaugurated by US Congressman Barney Frank himself, who used the occasion to praise Israeli “democracy”…”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., p. 188 (footnote)
Desiring Arabs

Democracy, Effort

“To understand events as experienced by actual men and institutions we must be concerned with the history of errors and false starts as well as successes-although we make this distinction on the basis of what we now know of the tradition of success. As we go back in time the uncertainty of the outlook and of the objectives of scientific inquiries increases. The essence of the scientific movement is research. The answers to the essential question, what to do in scientific research-what questions to put to nature, by what methods to get answers, what to count as satisfactory answers-became clear only by the accumulation of successes and the marking of failures.”

Alistair Cameron Crombie (1915–1996) Australian zoologist, historian of science

A. C. Crombie, 1963. as cited in: Robert Maxwell Young. Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. p. 101.

Men, Error, History, Failure

“I've gotta keep writing. But where's the next step, where do you go? But at my age, you start to get tired. You're not full of piss and vinegar. The vinegar's all gone.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

Age

“At one time there was a black-out of any development of administrative law. The curtains were drawn across to prevent the light coming in. The remedy of certiorari was hedged about with all sorts of technical limitations. It did not give a remedy when inferior tribunals went wrong, but only when they went outside their jurisdiction altogether. The black-out started in 1841 with Reg. v. Bolton (1841) 1 Q. B. 66 and became darkest in 1922, Rex v. Nat Bell Liquors Ltd. [1922] 2 A. C. 128. It was not relieved until 1952, Rex v. Northumberland Compensation Appeal Tribunal, Ex parte Shaw [1952] 1 K. B. 338. Whilst the darkness still prevailed, we let in some light by means of a declaration. The most notable cases were Barnard v. National Dock Labour Board [1953] 2 Q. B. 18 and Anisminic Ltd. v. Foreign Compensation Commission [1969] 2 A. C. 147. I sat in the preliminary hearings of both of them. We allowed each of those cases to go forward. It was because otherwise persons would be without a remedy for an injustice: see Barnard v. National Dock Labour Board [1953] 2 Q. B. 18, 43 and the Anisminic case [1969] 2 A. C. 147, 231B-C In effect it was only by leave that the action for a declaration was allowed to proceed.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Judicial review.
Judgments

Law, Light, Time, Parting

“The answer to any question starting, "Why don't they—" is almost always, "Money."”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Shooting Destination Moon (1950)

Money, Question

“(talking about how girls like mystery) Next time your lady leaves the room, take a dump on the floor! 'Cuz there is nothing more mysterious than a dump on the floor! And it always starts a conversation, am I right? Honey, what happened? You better hold me 'cause I'm afraid.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Girl, Time

“Porno is just like any other drug; after a while you start building up a tolerance to it.”

Richard Jeni (1957–2007) American comedian

A Big, Steaming Pile Of Me

“I was pretty much raised in an entirely vegetarian household. I wasn't aware that there was a whole community of vegetarians out there. There was a point where I said, "I want to understand the other side of this situation," and I ate meat for maybe three years. Then right around the time that I phased meat out and became vegetarian, I recognized that I was lactose intolerant. So again, I was completely naïve to the fact that there was a thing called veganism. After a few years, I started going to a lot of hardcore shows where everybody was straight edge and vegan. That was when I found out that there were other people that were like-minded.”

Derek Grant (drummer)

"Vegan Rockers Alkaline Trio Talk" http://vegnews.com/articles/page.do?pageId=1716&catId=5, interview with VegNews (February 22, 2010).

People, Communication, Understanding, Time

“As regards my paintings of similar compositions I cannot give you any indication [about possible 'variants' in his works] because I'm afraid I've never made a note of where my paintings have ended up... I am always at work and work is my sole passion. And unfortunately I've become aware that I must always start from the beginning, and ought to burn what I've done in the past.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Quote in his letter of 2 Aug. 1954; as cited in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 42
1945 - 1964

Passion, Past, Painting

“Viewed through any conventional lens, President-elect Donald Trump’s candidacy was improbable from start to finish. Today, two things about his victory seem to be in sharper focus: one, that Trump’s victory might best be understood as the success of the country’s first independent president, and second, that the Trump coalition may be even more uniquely his than President Obama’s has turned out to be.”

Dan Balz (1946) American journalist

Donald Trump, America’s first independent president (November 19, 2016)

Success, Victory, Country

“Some guys they just give up living,
And start dying little by little, piece by piece.
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racin' in the street.Tonight, tonight the strip's just right.
I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats.
Calling out around the world, we're going racin' in the street.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Racing in the Street"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

World, Guy, Home

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Problem of Pain

The Problem of Pain (1940)

God, Forgiveness, Hell, Question

“I started writing instrumentals but Roma pointed out they were very visual, so she started writing lyrics.. and Nicky had this idea of creating a wall of sound and started multi-tracking my voice.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

The Times Magazine interview (2005)

Idea

“I have always been interested in the occult, but during the filming of The Mummy I had to keep such things private, especially in those days. I used the occult auto-suggestively…I mean, before I would play a scene I would get into the spirit, so to speak, with certain prayers. As a child my father gave me an Ouija board and soon I started to get messages, then I moved towards the Tarot. By the time I was in Basil Sidney’s company I was asked to read cards all the time for the other players, and Basil himself depended on what I saw in those cards.”

Zita Johann (1904–1993) actress

Camp David: Zita Johann http://filmsinreview.com/2007/02/01/camp-david-february-2007-zita-johann/3/ (1981)

Time, Reading, Dependency

“We have been living in an ideological bubble — one of market fundamentalism.From the trauma of the Great Depression to 1973, there was a broad consensus across the democratic world that markets were absolutely essential to generate wealth, but they will also cause all sorts of problems if they are left unregulated. Economists like JM Keynes and JK Galbraith taught us that if you abolish markets, you get starvation; but if you abolish all the democratic checks and balances on markets, you get a system that eats itself. Unregulated businesses will cause unsustainable levels of pollution and inequality, and ultimately start pursuing unhinged business models that cause the whole system to collapse.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

"Has Market Fundamentalism Had Its Day?" http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1269, The Independent (2008-03-20).

World, Business, Problem, Wealth

“…I don’t think of myself as a pop star. I started out as a jazz singer. And I love having the chance to just jump in and sing songs that touch me or move me.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On her comeback to singing before a live audience with "album cuts"
Freeman interview (September 2012)

Love, Star, Thinking, Singing

“I could start this review by stating that Dumb and Dumberer lives up to its name, or by calling it stupid, moronic, and idiotic, but I believe that approach is a trap, since a movie like this might relish being the object of such bland invectives. Instead, let me try a few that can't possibly be misconstrued as twisted praise: unfunny, boring, torturous, and unwatchable. … [N]o movie could be more aptly compared to raw sewage than this film - Directed By Troy Miller.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1484 of Dumb and Dumberer (2003). Zero star reviews

Stupidity

“The Capitalist system is a highly adaptable entity. And so it isn't surprising that alternative spaces and forms of living provided interesting ideas that could be milked and marketed. So certain structural features of these "indie" movement outputs were suddenly highly acclaimed, applied and copy-pasted into capitalist developing laboratories. These qualities fit best into the tendency in which -- by the end of the seventies -- bourgeois society started to update and re-launch using the experiences gained through countercultural projects. Mainstream harvested the knowledge that was won in these projects and used it. Normalizing dissent.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Grenzfurther, J. and Schneider, F.: 'Hacking the Spaces' http://www.monochrom.at/hacking-the-spaces/, 2009

Idea, Knowledge, Past

“I discovered soon that teaching has the handicap of retrospection. And that I don't believe in. So I started [at the w:Bauhaus in Dessau] instead a method of handling material with the material itself. So that was my main change. Whereas Itten before [Itten left the Bauhaus in 1923 and Albers followed him as art-teacher] had only spoken about the appearance, 'matiere' - (the French word) and I said I would turn from 'matiere' - the outside - to the inside, to the capacity of the material, before the appearance. And that changed the attitude basically I think.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Art, Thinking, Teachers, Appearance

“To those who voted for someone else in either party, I will work hard to earn your support and I will work very hard to earn that support. To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of super delegates, we welcome you with open arms. And by the way, the terrible trade deals that Bernie was so vehemently against and he's right on that will be taken care of far better than anyone ever thought possible and that's what I do. We are going to have fantastic trade deals. We're going to start making money and bringing in jobs.”

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

Victory speech after winning New Jersey and other states Tuesday night (7 June 2016) – TIME transcript http://time.com/4360872/donald-trump-new-jersey-victory-speech-transcript/ 2010s, 2016, June

Money, Way, Support

“Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about — about what the issues really are — and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Source: The Intentional Stance (1987), p. 350

Time

“I wake up angry every morning and start reading. Then I'm furious.”

Paul Conrad (1924–2010) German theologian

As quoted in Astor, D. (1999). The state of editorial cartooning eyed at Iowa City symposium. Editor & Publisher, 132(43): 35.

Reading

“To listen to Mr. Engelbart that day almost five years ago was to realize that the computer industry, when it started, was not simply about becoming a chief executive or retiring on stock options at 35. It was to remember that real innovation — the stuff that made computers so much more than "crummy factors of production" — comes from mysterious places, wild people, dreamers and tinkerers, and to remember all the skepticism they had to endure.”

Ellen Ullman (1949) American writer

People

“People are a bit blind. They don’t see life. Being a photographer I see life, every inch of it. I’m obsessed with nature and animals and the earth; I find concrete things that distract me. Most people are the opposite… they find life boring, squirrels or sparrows boring, whereas I find them fascinating. It has to do with the way we live. It probably started with religion which leads some people astray. To fight over whose god is better has nothing to do with love or spirituality. Perhaps it’s guilt. We are suppressed and spend our time trying to figure out who we are. The most shocking thing I’ve learned concerns abuse, child abuse, animal abuse, abuse to every living creature. There is a world of little Hitlers out there. Slaughterhouses, vivisection and experimenting on animals for no reason is sick. Luckily younger people are becoming more aware.”

Linda McCartney (1941–1998) American photographer

Interview with Linda McCartney http://oobujoobu.tumblr.com/post/10590341050/interview-with-linda-mccartney by Karen Fox, Diamond Hard Music Entertainment, 1989.

Love, Life, God, People

“It is pretty clear in the Bible story that the whale swallowing Jonah wasn't meant as a punishment from God, it was God saving him from drowning. So it was actually provision to give him a second chance. The whale itself was the start of Jonah's second chance.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

From Disc Two; Behind the Scenes: Jonah and the Bible (00:02:59-00:03:18)
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie DVD (2002)

God, Chance

“Start a new fashion, wear your heart on your sleeve
Sometimes you reach what's real just by making believe
Unafraid, unashamed
There is joy to be claimed in this world
You even might wind up being glad to be you.”

Stephen Schwartz (1948) American musical theatre lyricist and composer

Ever Ever After
Enchanted (2007)

World, Fashion, Heart, Joy

“It is imperative, from the Indian side, that the powers that be in Indian universities must recognize the need for historical Indo-European linguistics in their humanities departments if they are to make significant contributions to the protohistory of their subcontinent. Indo-European studies should, if anything, be an Indian forte, not exclusively a European one; many Indian scholars have a distinct head start due to their advanced knowledge of Sanskrit, which still plays a fundamental and extensive role in this field. In particular, it is simply unacceptable that research into substratum influence in Sanskrit texts has primarily been the preserve of a dozen or so Western scholars, however qualified.”

Edwin Bryant book The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture

The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture

Knowledge, Study, Universe

“Turkey is not ready to continue the process that was started and to move forward without preconditions in line with the letter of the Protocols… We consider unacceptable the pointless efforts of making the dialogue between Armenia and Turkey an end in itself; from this moment on, we consider the current phase of normalization exhausted.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

Televised Address of the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on the Process of Normalization of Relations between Armenia and Turkey http://www.president.am/events/news/eng/?day=22&month=04&year=2010&id=983 (April 22, 2010)

Effort

“Lulu made most of his telephone calls. He made this one himself, on a special line that didn't pass through her desk. It went straight from his office to the War Department. Men checked twice a day to make sure the damnyankees didn't tap it. It rang only once before the Chief of the General Staff picked it up. "Forrest speaking." "Featherston," Jake said, and then, "Blackbeard." He hung up. There. It was done. The die was cast. Whatever was going to happen would happen… starting tomorrow morning, early tomorrow morning. Summer had just come in. Jake worked through the rest of June 21. He ate supper, then went right on working through the night. Lulu brought him cup after cup of coffee. After a while, yawning, she went home to bed. He worked on, behind blackout curtains that kept light from leaking out of the Gray House and showing where it was from the air. June 21 passed through to June 22. All that coffee made Jake's eart thud and soured his stomach. He gulped a Bromo-Seltzer and went on. At a quarter past three, the drone of airplane engines and the thunder of distant artillery- not distant enough; damn those Yankee robbers!”

Harry Turtledove book American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

made him whoop for sheer glee. He'd waited so long. Now his day was here.
Source: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003), p. 534.

Men, War, Home, Coffee

“It is the first time in my life that I have not been able to do anything. I am in a bad state of mind and I am demoralized, and that influences me. I have only [made] seven canvases. I am sorry. I wanted to leave Cagnes, this landscape that I cannot endure. I even went for a few days to Cap Martin, where I thought of settling down. It displeased me. I had to rub out the canvases I started... I am in Cagnes again, against my will, where, instead of landscapes, I shall be forced to do some miserable still lifes. You will understand in what a state of indecision I am. Can't you suggest some place for me? Because, several times I have had the intention of returning to Paris.”

Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) painter

quote in 1929
In a letter to his Paris art-dealer w:Léopold Zborowski, 1923; as quoted in Soutine, Monrou Wheeler, Museum of modern art, New York, 1950; p. 61

Life, Quotes, Understanding, Time

“I started to sink like the moon tends to do if you stare at it too long
Then you blink and it's gone”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

The Awful Sweetness Of Escaping Sweat
A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997 (1998)

“We have learned coordination of mind and body and the "ki breathing methods". Therefore we can bring the ki of the universe into our bodies at anytime. When a water pump is dried out, no water can flow from the well up through the pump. To start this flow again we must put some water back into the pump. In the same way, ki does not flow strongly in a person suffering from illness or misfortune. Let us practice "kiatsuho" to put back into these people, stimulate their own flow of ki, and give them a fresh start to happiness.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

16. Kiatsuho - pressing with ki
Ki Sayings (2003)

Happiness, People, Way, Suffering

“Who is it climbs the summit of the road?
Only the beggar bumming his dark load.
Who was it cried to see the falling star?
Only the landless soldier lost in war.
And did a thousand years go by in vain?
And does another thousand start again?”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"The Mahratta Ghats", line 22; p. 44.
Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1945)

War, Star

“In the 1930s, when I started, Martha Graham was the only dancer doing anything modern, but she did it all to classical music. I couldn't see myself doing Swan Lake every night, and I wanted to develop a truly American style. The only dancer in the movies at that time with any success was Fred Astaire, but he did very small, elegant steps in a top hat, white tie, and tails.”

Gene Kelly (1912–1996) American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer and choreographer

Quoted in "Gene Kelly's Musical Memories"

Music, Time, Success, Night

“This exchange – mainly in the form of letters [between the brothers van Gogh] – was not only about painting and art, but covered everything to do with one's existence and the philosophical or religious colouring, in a word: for the reader of the letters written by Vincent to his brother a total of human behaviour is revealed that of the dual being of van Gogh. This is how my first wish and then obsession was started, to build a monument for the two van Gogh brothers.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Source: 1940 - 1960, Les frères Van Gogh, origine et justification', c. 1955, pp. 67-69

Art, Painting

“It having been said above that God bends all the reprobate, and even Satan himself, at his will, three objections are started. First, that this happens by the permission, not by the will of God. To this objection there is a twofold reply, the one, that angels and men, good and bad, do nothing but what is appointed by God; the second, that all movements are secretly directed to their end by the hidden inspiration of God…”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book I Ch. 18 "The Instrumentality of the Wicked employed by God, while He continues free from every taint" as translated by Henry Beveridge.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Men, God, Angels