Quotes about state
page 73

“But this time, and particularly in front of this crowd, it felt far more urgent to point out the hypocrisy of our side. How can conservative women hope to have any credibility on the subject of sexual harassment or relations between the sexes when they excuse the behavior of President Trump? And how can we participate in any conversation about sexual ethics when the Republican president and the Republican Party backed a man (Roy Moore) credibly accused of child molestation for the United States Senate? I watched my fellow panelists’ eyes widen. And then the booing began. I’d been dreading it for days, but when it came, I almost welcomed it. There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth. And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability. I spoke to a hostile audience for the sake of every person who has watched this spectacle of mendacity in disbelief and misery for the past two years. Just hearing the words you know are true can serve as ballast, steadying your mind when so much seems unreal.”

Mona Charen (1957) political writer

I'm Glad I Got Booed at CPAC (2018)

Women, Hostility, Truth, Hope

“I wish President Musharraf well, we want to work with him to bring greater balance in our own relations. But I have to be realistic enough to recognize the role that terrorist elements have played in the last few years in the history of Pakistan. Taliban was the creation of Pakistan extremists, the Wahabi Islam which has flourished, thousands and thousands of schools, the madrassas, were set up to preach this jihad based on hatred of other religions... and Pakistan is not a democracy in the sense that we know and you know.... We wish Pakistan success in emerging as a moderate Muslim state. We will work with President Musharraf... but we have to recognize what has happened.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

On Pakistan, as quoted in "Interview: Indian Prime Minister Singh" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072001916.html, The Washington Post (20 July 2005) 2001-2005

School, Religion, Democracy, History

“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism. "Populists" believe in conspiracies and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy. Because of my name and prominence as head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of "conspirator in chief" from some of these people.
Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted in our active international role during the past half-century. Not only was the very real threat posed by Soviet Communism overcome, but there have been fundamental improvements in societies around the world, particularly in the United States, as a result of global trade, improved communications, and the heightened interaction of people from different cultures. Populists rarely mention these positive consequences, nor can they cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic growth and expansion of our political power without them.”

David Rockefeller (1915–2017) American banker and philanthropist

Source: Memoirs (2003), Ch. 27 : Proud Internationalist, p. 406

People, Secret, World, Family

“The reformer Yeltsin represents the tendency which wants to reduce the gigantic state apparatus. Consequently he follows in Trotsky's footsteps.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

New Times, 21 March 1990. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism?, pp. 56.

“All state revenues flowing from direct and indirect sources pour constantly into the pockets of big loan-capital.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

"Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money" (1919)

“The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

A History of Economics (1991), ch. 21

Time

“Economic responsibility goes with military strength and an undue share in the costs of peacekeeping. Free riders are perhaps more noticeable in this area than in the economy, where a number of rules in trade, capital movements, payments and the like have been evolved and accepted as legitimate. Free ridership means that disproportionate costs must be borne by responsible nations, which must on occasion take care of the international or system interest at some expense in falling short of immediate goals. This is a departure from the hard nosed school of international relations in political science, represented especially perhaps by Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger, who believe that national interest and the balance of power constitute a stable system. Leadership, moreover, had overtones of the white man's burden, father knows best, the patronizing attitude of the lady of the manor with her Christmas baskets. The requirement, moreover, is for active, and not merely passive responsibility of the German—Japanese variety. With free riders, and the virtually certain emergency of thrusting newcomers, passivity is a recipe for disarray. The danger for world stability is the weakness of the dollar, the loss of dedication of the United States to the international system's interest, and the absence of candidates to fill the resultant vacua.”

Charles P. Kindleberger (1910–2003) American economic historian

"Economic Responsibility", The Second Fred Hirsch Memorial Lecture, Warwick University, 6 March 1980, republished in Comparative Political Economy: A Retrospective (2003)

World, School, Departure, Science

“I was seriously worried about his psychological state, I thought he wasn't coping, and he wasn't showing any signs of finding a way back to coping … At that point, if you'd asked him to make a huge decision as Prime Minister on that day, yes, I would have been concerned about his capacity. My sense of him at that point was that he was spent in a physical and psychological sense.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Recalling Rudd's psychological status in January 2010, following the December 2009 Climate Change Summit, in Copenhagen.
The Killing Season, Episode two: Great Moral Challenge (2009–10)

Way, Decision, Sense

“The real question is: "Should we have public schools?" Let's argue about that one for a while first. If we are going to have them, then we should discuss what could be taught in them. Who decides what is going to be taught in them? Does Bill Clinton decide what's taught? Or Osama Bin Laden decide what's taught? Should you decide what's taught, or should I decide? The whole problem is that some people have this idiot idea that children belong to the state. No, no, no, children belong to God, they are entrusted to parents. The parents should decide what God wants them to be taught, the state does not ever have children. It is sterile, it can't have children, they want to steal yours.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

God, Children, People, School

“I don’t know who decided on a structure of 36 states, but I say, if we decide to review it, why shouldn’t we? Those states, you and I must understand, were mainly punitive creations rather than a need for economic advancement of Nigeria or Nigerians. Let us stop burying our heads in the sand. We have had national emergencies and managed to get out of it. Let us look at each other eyeball to eyeball and decide the type of country that we want to live in. I believe that is essential.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

Understanding, Country

“In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

from "Cardinal Ratzinger Sees a Media Campaign Against Church," Zenit.org, December 3, 2002
2002

“The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.”

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

My Autobiography by Mussolini, New York: NY, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1928) p. 280.
1920s

Law, Selfishness

“Well, it's hard to tell on the basis of the Party's rhetoric, after all they're running for state ofﬁce, but my experience is that most people who are in the Libertarian Party have pretty decent anarchist impulses, even if they do not say they are anarchists—most of them will say they are libertarians, at any rate.And one thing that is useful is that they have a fairly well-reﬁned analysis of why they aren't conservative. It took the New Left to do a proper analysis on American liberals, it seems to me, and I suspect that the libertarians are doing the best analysis of American conservatives.I think that they are quite good people, and that the Party contains within it probably more people of an anarchist tendency than any other organisation in the country.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

Anarchism in America http://alexpeak.com/art/films/aia/ (15 January 1983)

People, Thinking, Country

“ANARCHISM (from the Gr. ἅν, and άρχη, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary — as is seen in organic life at large — harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Kropotkin's entry on "Anarchism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html

Life, Education, Law, Communication

“The aggressor too should know that the preemptive use of nuclear weapons would not insure victory. With modern detection systems and the combat readiness of the Soviet Union's strategic nuclear forces, the United States would not be able to deal a crippling blow to the socialist countries. The aggressor will not be able to evade an all-crushing retaliatory strike.”

Dmitriy Ustinov (1908–1984) Soviet military commander and politician

Quoted in "Physics and Nuclear Arms Today" - Page 94 - by David Hafemeister - Science - 1991.

Victory, Country

“North Korea cannot normalize relations with the United States.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2012)

“There are libertarians who try to retrieve libertarianism from the Libertarian Party just as there are Christians who try to reclaim Christianity from Christendom and communists (I’ve tried to myself) who try to save communism from the Communist parties and states. They (and I) meant well but we lost.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

The Libertarian as Conservative (1984)

Communication

“How is an ordinary citizen or subject of the King to stand up against this formidable machine, which, once it is in power, will prescribe for every one of them where they are to work; what they are to work at; where they may go and what they may say; what views they are to hold and within what limits they may express them; where their wives are to go to queue up for the State ration; and what education their children are to receive to mould their views of human liberty and conduct in the future?”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 34
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Children, Education, Future

“The partition of Czechoslovakia under pressure from England and France amounts to the complete surrender of the Western Democracies to the Nazi threat of force. Such a collapse will bring peace or security neither to England nor to France. On the contrary, it will place these two nations in an ever weaker and more dangerous situation. … It is not Czechoslovakia alone which is menaced, but also the freedom and the democracy of all nations. The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion. The war potential of Germany will increase in a short time more rapidly than it will be possible for France and Great Britain to complete the measure necessary for their defence.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Statement to the Press (21 September 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), pp. 978-979
The 1930s

War, Peace, Democracy, Freedom

“I have to make the declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single, irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us—nothing. We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, with God's help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its peoples from his yoke. Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe. That is our policy and that is our declaration. It follows therefore that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Radio broadcast (22 June 1941) on the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1121
The Second World War (1939–1945)

God, People, Help, Fight

“When the imperial army was encamping at Mathura, a holy city of the Hindus, the state of affairs with regard to temples of Mathura was brought to the notice of His Majesty. Thus, he ordered the faujdar of the city, Abdul Nabi Khan, to raze to the ground every temple and to construct big mosques (over their demolished sites).”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). Futuhat-i-‘Alamgiri of Ishwardas Nagar, translated into English by Tanseem Ahmad, Delhi, 1978. p. 82
Quotes from late medieval histories

“My view as a Chinese is that Obama's elevation to the position of 44th president of the United States underscores teh greatness of the American system.”

Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist

"Obama's Election, The Republican Factor, and a Proposal for China" (2008)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

“.. include prima facie but not ipso facto the following: (a) Homosexuality or gross indecency with another male person; (b) Possession of or trading in an illegal narcotic or other drug; (c) Living upon the earnings of prostitution; (d) Membership in the Communist Party or one of its front organizations (see schedule attached); (e) “Trainism”; (f) Advocating the violent overthrow of the government; (g) Slandering the President of the United States; (h)...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

.
October “THE ROUGH DRAFT”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Personality

“Against all the odds of inertia and ignorance and fear of state power, Clarence Earl Gideon insisted that he had a right to a lawyer and kept on insisting all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. His triumph there shows that even the poorest and least powerful of men — a convict with not even a friend to visit him in prison — can take his cause to the highest court in the land and bring about a fundamental change in the law.”

Anthony Lewis movie Gideon's Trumpet

[218, Anthony, Lewis, w:Anthony Lewis, Vintage, 1989, 9780679723127, Gideon's Trumpet, http://books.google.com/books?id=IhDfidRb5wIC&pg=PA218&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false]

Men, Fear, Law, Way

“From this Legionary school a new man will have to emerge, a man with heroic qualities; a giant of our history to do battle and win over all the enemies of our Fatherland, his battle and victory having to extend even beyond the material world into the realm of invisible enemies, the powers of evil. Everything that our mind can imagine as more beautiful spiritually; everything the proudest that our race can produce, greater, more just, more powerful, wiser, purer, more diligent and more heroic, this is what the Legionary school must give us! A man in whom all the possibilities of human grandeur that are implanted by God in the blood of our people be developed to the maximum. This hero, the product of Legionary education, will also know how to elaborate programs; will also know how to solve the Jewish problem; will also know how to organize the state well; will also know how to convince other Romanians; and if not, he will know how to win, for that is why he is a hero. This hero, this Legionary of bravery, labor, and justice, with the powers God implanted in his soul, will lead our Fatherland on the road of its glory.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), The Legion

God, People, World, Education

“Today Eratosthenes' method [of calculating the circumference of the earth] seems almost banal … yet it is inaccessible to prescientific civilizations, and in all of Antiquity not a single Latin author succeeded in stating it coherently.”

Lucio Russo (1944) Italian historian and scientist

3.2, "Geodesy and Mathematical Geography", p. 68
The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

“Is this the anti-gay state? Aren't you the people that voted on the anti-gay thing?”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

Lollapalooza, Denver, Colorado; July 8, 1995
Stage banter

People

“There is no comparison between the suicidal terrorism of the desperate and the reasoned terrorism of an overarmed state.”

Ilan Halevi (1943–2013) Jewish Palestinian journalist, politician

A History of the Jews (1987).

Suicide

“The individualistic conception of the State as some external authority exercising a malign influence upon the life of the community is a travesty of fact. The State is that form of organised society which has evolved through the process of the ages, and represents the aptitude for freedom and self-government to which any people has attained. The policeman and the soldier, for example, who are at the call of the landlord or the employer when tenant or workman becomes turbulent, exist by the will and under the express authority of those same tenants and workmen, who constitute a preponderating majority in the State, and without whose consent neither soldier nor policeman could continue to exist.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 6-7

Life, People, Age, Exercises

“While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States—that is, prosperity.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Address at annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States (1 May 1930). Hoover is sometimes misreported as having said on this occasion or another, "Prosperity is just around the corner"; reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 48.

People, Intelligence, Effort, Future

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) pages 133-134 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=156&itemID=F944&viewtype=image The last sentence of the first paragraph is often quoted in isolation to make Darwin seem heartless. The Descent of Man (1871)

Life, Men, Marriage, Health

“Living systems exist in the solid regime near the edge of chaos, and natural selection achieves and sustains such a poised state.”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

Source: The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution (1993), p.232

Nature

“And now, as a result of honoring our commitment to our gallant allies, that man Roosevelt has sought from the U. S. Congress a declaration of war not only against England and France but also against the Confederate States of America. His servile lackeys, misnamed Democrats, have given him what he wanted, and the telegraph informs me that fighting has begun along our border and on the high seas. Leading our great and peaceful people into war is a fearful thing, not least because, with the great advances of science and industry over the past half-century, this may prove the most disastrous and terrible of all wars, truly a war of the nations: indeed a war of the world. But right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for those things we have always held dear in our hearts: for the rights of the Confederate States and of the white men who live in them; for the liberties of small nations everywhere from outside oppression; for our own freedom and independence from the vicious, bloody regime to the north. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and fortunes, everything we are and all that we have, with the pride of those who know the day has come when the Confederacy is privileged to spend her blood and her strength for the principles that gave her birth and led to her present happiness. God helping us, we can do nothing else. Men of the Confederacy, is it your will that a state of war should exist henceforth between us and the United States of America?" "Yes!”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

The answer roared from Reginald Bartlett's throat, as from those of the other tens of thousands of people jamming the Capitol Square. Someone flung a straw hat in the air. In an instant, hundreds of them, Bartlett's included, were flying. A great chorus of "Dixie" rang out, loud enough, Bartlett thought, for the damnyankees to hear it in Washington.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 33

Men, God, War, Happiness

“As I was writing about Grace Marks, and about her interlude in the Asylum, I came to see her in context — the context of other people's opinions, both the popular images of madness and the scientific explanations for it available at the time. A lot of what was believed and said on the subject appears like sheer lunacy to us now. But we shouldn't be too arrogant — how many of our own theories will look silly when those who follow us have come up with something better? But whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience — who knows when such a malady may strike? When "mad," at least in literature, you aren't yourself; you take on another self, a self that is either not you at all, or a truer, more elemental one than the person you're used to seeing in the mirror. You're in danger of becoming, in Shakespeare's works, a mere picture or beast, and in Susanna Moodie's words, a mere machine; or else you may become an inspired prophet, a truth-sayer, a shaman, one who oversteps the boundaries of the ordinarily visible and audible, and also, and especially, the ordinarily sayable. Portraying this process is deep power for the artist, partly because it's a little too close to the process of artistic creation itself, and partly because the prospect of losing our self and being taken over by another, unfamiliar self is one of our deepest human fears.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

People, Truth, Fear, Literature

“We cooperate with our brotherly Arab states… on the basis of the individual interests of those Arab states.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

November 26, 1958, as quoted in Malik Mufti (1996), Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq.

“Much was made by abolitionists that the King James version of the Bible didn't use the word slaves, but, instead, servants. This meant, in their minds, that God didn't really approve of slavery. But that argument was linguistic at best. Slavery was codified and even sanctified in the tenth commandment, throwing slaves (and wives) in with other property belonging to one's neighbor that one must not covet. The Bible even regulated--as opposed to banning outright--the killing of slaves, stating that if a slave were beaten to death, the slave owner should be punished (though not killed himself, as would be his fate were he to kill a freeman), but if the slave didn't die until a day or two after the beating, the slave owner "shall not be punished, for he [the slave] is his money."”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 56

Death, Money, God, Fate

“The third nightfall was less impressive than the second, which mirrored a rule Tris had already identified; new emotions devalued, going from intense through familiar to reach a kind of ghost state where one no longer really noticed them at all.”

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (1953) British writer

Source: Stamping Butterflies (2004), Chapter 37 (p. 237)

“The peaceful and orderly inauguration of George W. Bush, as 43rd President of the United States, after the closest election in American history, is an event deserving thoughtful and thankful reflection. There were present on the inaugural platform former presidents of both parties, as well as the gracious loser in the contest just ended. They were testimony to the prizing above all political differences, of the rule of law under the Constitution. We are accustomed, now, to resolving our differences with ballots and not bullets. We are accustomed, now, when we lose an election to look to the next election to advance our political fortunes. But few of us today are aware of how recent in human experience, and how fragile, is this phenomenon.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Thoughts on Lincoln's Birthday (2001)

Peace, Law, History

“There is no question that Whoopi Goldberg's foolish comments at a John Kerry fundraiser hurt Kerry — who had no idea how to handle the situation. Chevy Chase should have learned from that. Even he has to know that calling the president of the United States an "F" is not going to be accepted by most Americans. Now you don't see this kind of thing on the right. You don't see prominent conservatives cursing out Democratic members of Congress, for example. Now I know talk radio can get rough but nothing like what these Hollywood nitwits are throwing out there.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2004-12-17
Disrespecting the Office of the Presidency
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,141845,00.html
2007-09-20

Idea, Question, Learning, Hurt

“Most imprisoned writers have been shut away for their activities as citizens striving for liberation against the oppression of the general society to which they belong. Others have been condemned by repressive regimes for serving society by writing as well as they can; for this aesthetic venture of ours becomes subversive when the shameful secrets of our times are explored deeply, with the artist's rebellious integrity to the state of being manifest in life around her or him; then the writer's themes and characters inevitably are formed by the pressures and distortions of that society as the life of the fisherman is determined by the power of the sea.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

Life, Secret, Time, Sea

“Large-eyed and well endowed, as her name Pritha connotes, she is strikingly lovely, and Kuntibhoja exhorts her not to neglect any service out of pride in her beauty. Kunti’s relationship with Durvasa does not appear to have been easy. In the account she gives much later to Vyasa, she tells him that despite Durvasa’s conduct having been such as to provide abundant cause for anger, she had not given way to it. She further states that she was constrained at the sage’s insistence to accept his boon, whereby any god would be compelled to answer her summons, and that she obeyed out of fear of his curse. The interaction that she describes after this between her and the sun god, Surya, is exactly similar – the same insistence and the same fear.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

Love, God, Fear, Beauty

“From the computer application point of view the primary problem [of Computer-Aided Design] is not how to solve problems, but how to state them.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Computer-Aided Design: A Statement of Objectives (1960), p. iii; Abstract.

Problem

“You know, there are some people who were also put this decree in a difficult position, but still decided to pay a "tax". They think to themselves: let it be like to be. Let not mistaken, it came to nothing lead. If we do not protect each other, from the regime of the state of the power, to help each other, then no one will help us. It is the law by which our ancestors lived. If your relative is bad — all the relatives came to the rescue. If your neighbour is bad — all quit their job and help bad one. If your friend is bad — all considered it their duty to help. We need to stand behind each other as a wall. Only then we can survive!”

Uladzimir Nyaklyayew (1946) Belarusian politician and writer

Source: Comment on the unemployment tax, which introduced Lukashenka, Некляев о Марше 17 февраля: Нужно стоять друг за друга стеной https://charter97.org/ru/news/2017/2/14/240865/ // Charter'97 (in Russian).

People, Law, Thinking, Help

“The light of the guru’s grace helps us to see and remove the obstacles in our path. An ashram is not a mere cluster of inanimate buildings, temples and trees; rather it is the very embodiment of the sadguru’s grace. It is a vital, dynamic and living institution that stimulates the aspiration of the sincere student to attain the state of oneness.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

The Timeless Path (2009)

Tree, Light, Help, Sincerity

“The intellectual’s … playfulness, in its various manifestations, is likely to seem to most men a perverse luxury; in the United States the play of the mind is perhaps the only form of play that is not looked upon with the most tender indulgence. His piety is likely to seem nettlesome, if not actually dangerous. And neither quality is considered to contribute very much to the practical business of life.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 33

Life, Men, Business

“As author in control of the plot I can choose and dictate the fall-out of events from any number of infinite possibilities -- which is a very volatile state of affairs, suggesting the ephemerality of fictional narrative. I can choose to have seven characters and kill six of them off in the first five minutes. I can have seventy characters and squash them under a fallen rock, make them copulate with beasts, sit them on the moon or turn their hair white. This casual condition of authorship is irresponsible.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Watching Water

“The odd thing is not that we are in the business of overthrowing other people's governments, but that we can still be surprised when somebody reminds us of it. In Asia, in Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East we have been propping up and knocking down governments more or less openly for the past twenty-five years.
It is an established policy. Everybody knows it. It is supposed to be done covertly, which is only sensible if you hope to succeed since publicity in matters of this sort can only make the natives restless and defeat the project. Imagine the chauvinistic rallying around President Nixon that would have occurred if Canada, say, had announced that her agents were going to destabilize United States society so that discontented Americans could heave the Nixon Administration out of office.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Our Uncle Is Now Dorian Sam" (p.93)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

People, Hope, Imagination, Business

“First, there is really no sign at all of any significant reduction in unemployment without a major change in policy…Unemployment has probably levelled out but at a totally unacceptable figure. Secondly, contrary to what the Secretary of State said, the post-oil surplus prospect—not merely the post-oil prospect, because the oil will take a long time to go, but the surplus, the big balance of payments surplus, which is beginning to decline quite quickly—still looks devastating…our balance of payments is now overwhelmingly dependent on this highly temporary and massive oil surplus. Our manufacturing industry is shrunken and what remains is uncompetitive…We have a manufacturing trade deficit of approximately £11 billion, all of which has built up in the past three to four years. This is containable by oil and by nothing else. Invisibles can take care of about £4 billion or £5 billion but they cannot do the whole job. As soon as oil goes into a neutral position we are in deep trouble. Should it go into a negative position, the situation would be catastrophic…To sell off a chunk of capital assets and to use the proceeds for capital investment in the rest of the public sector might just be acceptable. However, that is not what is proposed, and what is proposed cannot be justified on any reputable theory of public finance; and when it is accompanied by a Minister using the oil—which might itself be regarded as a capital asset; certainly it is not renewable—almost entirely for current purposes, it amounts to improvident finance on a scale that makes the Prime Minister's old friend General Galtieri almost Gladstonian.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/nov/12/industry-and-employment in the House of Commons (12 November 1985). 1980s

Change, Time, Past, Dependency

“As Nozick acknowledges, a modern state should not feel morally constrained by property holdings which might have had a Lockean pedigree but in fact do not. In this regard it is interesting that one of the main uses of Lockean theory these days is in defending the property rights of indigenous people—where a literal claim is being made about who had first possession of a set of resources and about the need to rectify the injustices that accompanied their subsequent expropriation.”

Jeremy Waldron (1953) American lawyer

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – "Property and Ownership" http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/

People, Feeling

“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375 (1927), at 375. In this case, in which the Court upheld a California anti-Communist statute, Brandeis, writing in a concurrence joined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concurred in the judgment but not in the reasoning. Whitney was later overruled (with the later Court adopting Brandeis's reasoning) in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
Judicial opinions

Men, Happiness, People, Truth

“Washington is right to be chastened after its scathing experience in Iraq this past decade. But it also ought to be motivated by that earlier disaster in Iraq, in which so many innocent Iraqis perished while the United States stood by and watched. Syria in 2012 is another Iraq of 1991 just waiting to happen. No one can say he did not know.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Intervention In Syria is a Moral and Human Imperative", New Republican (February 24, 2012)

Motivation, Waiting, Past

“The singleton hypothesis is that Earth-originating intelligent life will (eventually) form a singleton. It is an open question whether the singleton hypothesis is true. My own opinion is that it is more likely true than not. Historically, we have seen an overarching trend towards the emergence of higher levels of social organization, from hunter-gatherer bands, to chiefdoms, city-states, nation states, and now multinational organizations, regional alliances, various international governance structures, and other aspects of globalization. Extrapolation of this trend points to the creation of a singleton.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

What is a Singleton? https://nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html (2005)

Life, Intelligence, Question

“Mental states of every kind — sensations, feelings, images— which were at one time present in consciousness and then have disappeared from it — have not with their disappearance absolutely ceased to exist. Although the inwardly - turned look may no longer be able to find them, nevertheless they have not been utterly destroyed and annulled, but in a certain manner they, continue to exist, stored up to speak, in the memory.”

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist

Source: Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology, 1885, p. 1; Cited in: Richard F. Thompson, Stephen A. Madigan (2013) Memory: The Key to Consciousness, p. 87

Feeling, Memory, Time

“I swear to God, I will see [the Palestinian state], whether as a martyr or alive. Please, God, give me the honor of becoming a martyr in the fight for Jerusalem.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

As quoted at OneJerusalem.org (21 January 2002)
2000s

God, Fight

“Central to Jewish mysticism is the role that vegetarianism plays in messianic expectations: here vegetarianism functions in the concept of Jewish mystical time which chronicles human development from the vegetarian state in the Garden of Eden to the Messianic age when it is believed we will be vegetarians again. … in Judaism the laws governing responsibility to animals derive from the animal's place in the divine economy, assured by the covenantal statements, by the Jewish view of creation, and the Jewish view of a just and compassionate Creator. The stress of these laws with respect to the Jew is summed up in the question: How should the righteous (just) Jew behave toward animals, and the answer lies in the concept of the “imitatio Dei.””

Roberta Kalechofsky (1931) American activist

The just and merciful human behaves toward animals as a just and merciful Creator behaves toward humans. “Hierarchy, Kinship, and Responsibility: The Jewish Relationship to the Animal World,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 97 https://books.google.it/books?id=wi4n8i4YgpYC&pg=PA97-98.

Age, Law, Question, Time

“When Holy Church occasionally hinted that she still considered her authority to be supreme over all nations and superior to the authority of states, men in these times tended to snicker.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 28
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua

Men, Time

“So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression.”

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

1860s, Criticisms on "The Origin of the Species" (1864)

Appearance, Parting, Perfection

“$400 million in all cash, anybody know what that looks like? That's a lot of cash. That's a lot of case. And honestly, it's so sad. Think of it, going to Iran, a terrorist state. Now I happen to think they have plenty of money, we've given then $150 billion, so the $400 million is just, you know – I happen to think it goes into their accounts in Switzerland personally. Now, a lot of people say, "no, no, it's used for terror," and they use it for terror because it's the number one terror funder – not even close. But I also think that when you have $400 million in cash, different denominations, do you see the size of this? I guess they did release the pictures after all. They released pictures. … Obama said that he did it because we don't have a working account with Iran. Do you believe that? How long does it take to set up an account? Right? You don't have a working account, you set up an account, right?”

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

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Money, People, Sadness, Thinking

“"Democratic" State practice is nothing more or less than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other. Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

"The Criminality of the State" in American Mercury (March 1939). A similar statement was later made by Jerry Ford

Exercises, Study

“Economic growth in Australia did not require the incorporation of a backward, unproductive rural sector. When farming later developed on the pastoral runs, it was commercial farming. Australia, as its greatest historian Keith Hancock said, was born modern. The United States, by contrast, imitated to an extent the history of Europe. In areas which had been self-sufficient there was more regional variety in speech and habit. There were pockets of settlement which for a long time remained outside the commercial world, even when access to it became possible. Backwoodsmen, hillbillies and country music were the results.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

Australian History in 7 Questions (2014)

World, Music, History, Time

“What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with that which is here set forth.”

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

Book I, Ch. 1 "Prelude"
Founding Address (1876), An Ethical Philosopy of Life (1918)

“Sadiq Khan’s latest outburst that President Trump is ‘not welcome’ in London is well beyond his pay grade and flies in the face of common courtesy. It is also hypocritical: he is willing to host the ambassadors of countries which have a travel ban on Israeli citizens at a reception at City Hall, but hurls insults at President Trump who has highlighted the horrors of Islamism and wants to protect his own citizens from violent jihadis. His so-called drive to be ‘inclusive’ is a sham. He has snubbed the democratically elected President of the United States and the American people who voted for him, and London will be worse off for the continuing deterioration of his tone.”

David Kurten (1971) British politician

‘Not Welcome’: London’s Muslim Mayor Repeats Calls to Cancel Trump Visit http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/12/26/not-welcome-londons-muslim-mayor-repeats-calls-cancel-trump-visit/ (December 26, 2017)

People, Travel, Country

“The state does not function as we desired. The car does not obey. A man is at the wheel and he seems to lead it, but the car does not drive in the desired direction. It moves as another force wishes.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

As quoted in A Fate Worse than Debt (1988) Susan George.
Attributions

Cars

“If there's one statement that everyone in this room should remember that the President of the United States says, that sums up how the President looks at America, he said it about 6 weeks ago. He was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, and he said this was in response to the Ryan budget. And he said this, he said, talking about these three programs: He said 'America is a better country because of these programs. I will go one step further: America is a great country because of these programs.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Ladies and gentlemen, America was a great country before 1965.
Rick Santorum: 'America Was a Great Country Before 1965'
Crooks and Liars
2011-06-05
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rick-santorum-america-was-great-country-19
2011-06-07
misquoting Barack Obama speech on 2011-04-13 in response to Paul Ryan's budget proposal, which would replace Medicare with a voucher program: "'There but for the grace of God go I,' we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I'll go further — we would not be a great country without those commitments."

Country

“I am afraid I can hold out but cold comfort'for the present at least'to those of your correspondents who are lamenting the present state of things. Things are bad, are growing worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst if that is possible'and anything however paradoxical seems possible in the present perturbed world. The best thing for them is to realise that all this was necessary because certain possibilities had to emerge and be got rid of, if a new and better world was at all to come into being; it would not have done to postpone them for a later time…. Also they can remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and that the coming of dawn is inevitable. But they must remember too that the new world whose coming we envisage is not to be made of the same texture as the old and different only in pattern, and that it must come by other means'from within and not from without; so the best way is not to be too much preoccupied with the lamentable things that are happening outside, but themselves to grow within so that they may be ready for the new world, whatever form it may take.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

July 18, 1948 (From a letter.)
India's Rebirth

World, Way, Time, Night

“Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"The Contagion of Ideas", p. 44. A speech delivered to a group of teachers (Summer 1952); not previously published
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Behavior

“1. The several divisions and branches are in charge of superintendents, who are held responsible for the successful working of their respective divisions, and for the maintenance of proper discipline and conduct of all persons employed thereon, except such as are in the employment of other offices "acting under directions from the general superintendent's office, as herein after stated. They possess all the powers delegated by the organization to the general superintendent, except in matters pertaining to the duties of general ticket agent, general freight agent, general wood agent, telegraph "management, and engine and car repairs.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856)

Cars, Success, Personality

“The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Source: Against Method (1975), p. 295

Science

“The prototypical WASP is flabby in body and mind. He is fearful and easily cowed. He erupts in tears at a drop of a hat. He is gripped by the culture of apology, and flagellates over sins he has not committed. His eternal state of expiation is driven not by goodness, but by insufferable self-righteousness.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Sacrificing Kids to PC Pietism,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=607 WorldNetDaily.com, July 1, 2011. 2010s, 2011

Fear, Tear

“The object of Socialism is not to render the individual capable of living on his personal resources. That is the theory of radical individualism. Its object is to create in him a greater and greater sense of his dependence upon the state, and, at the same time, to inculcate in him the conviction that he is a part of it and that he has a duty and responsibility toward the state; and that only in so far as he fulfils this duty can he benefit by the advantages of a complete personal and social life.”

Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden (1864–1937) British politician

On the Insurance Bill (Labour Leader, 14 July 1911)

Life, Sense, Time, Parting

“Apparently we’re now in a state where most ads are full of people looking at us in a way that would heat us up down to our toes if it happened in real life, and we don’t think anything of it.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

October 16, 2005 weblog post http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/10/16/news.html#theywantyou

Life, People, Way, Thinking

“When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And "propaganda" got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words. So we found the words "counsel on public relations."”

Edward Bernays (1891–1995) American public relations consultant, marketing pioneer

Quoted in Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self (2002)

War, Peace

“When Acheson was first joined State as Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs, he writes the following in a section entitled "My Search for a Function"…"My official duties were summed up in the Department of State Bulletin by misleading platitudes…Both (Secretary) Hull and the President…knew me and, surely, had not asked me into the Department to perform the largely nonexistent duties defined in the Bulletin."”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

“Through exploitation of its influence over global financial affairs, the United States has been able to cover the costs of its hegemonic position, preserve a false domestic prosperity, and mask the consequences of its relative political and economic decline.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Eight, International Finance, p. 308

Falseness

“The state of emergency had negative effects on our democracy and economy, because of the state of emergency, the number of foreign investments to our country has been reduced and inflation, interest rates and the current deficit are higher now. The main reason is because Turkey is getting far away from democracy.”

Akif Hamzaçebi

As quoted in Turkey approves controversial security law http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-approves-controversial-security-law-1364915043 (24 July 2018), Middle East Eye.

Democracy, Country

“Endless discussions of multiculturalism proceed from the unsubstantiated assumption that numerous distinct “cultures” constitute American society. Only a few historians or observers even consider the possibility that the opposite may be true: that the world and the United States are relentlessly becoming more culturally uniform, not diverse.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: The End of Utopia (1999), pp. 47-48

World

“In the stupendous rush of change which is coming on the human world as a result of the present tornado of upheaval, ancient India's culture, attacked by European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of the nation that holds it in its keeping…. Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception, and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence…. To follow a law or principle involuntarily or ignorantly or contrary to the truth of one's consciousness is a falsehood and a self-destruction. To allow oneself to be killed, like the lamb attacked by the wolf, brings no growth, farthers no development, assures no spiritual merit. Concert or unity may come in good time, but it must be an underlying unity with a free differentiation, not a swallowing up of one by another or an incongruous and inharmonious mixture. Nor can it come before the world is ready for these greater things. To lay down one's arms in a state of war is to invite destruction and it can serve no compensating spiritual purpose…. India is indeed awaking and defending herself, but not sufficiently and not with the whole-heartedness, the clear sight and the firm resolution which can alone save her from the peril. Today it is close; let her choose,… for the choice is imperatively before her, to live or to perish.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

December, 1918
India's Rebirth

War, Children, Truth, World

“‘Magic,’” I stated, “is a symbol for any process not understood.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XVII : The world wobbled—, p. 151

“We are working tirelessly to make sure our immigrant communities stay vibrant. They are the very fabric of our society, a staple of who we are as a city, as a state, as a nation.”

Jose Peralta (1971–2018) American politician

http://muslimcommunityreport.com/2017/04/23/idc-immigration-forum-in-queens/ Immigration Forum in Queens
April 19th, 2017

Communication

“On achieving their desired end
Human powers cease to function,
And the soul sees that what it thought was right
Was wrong. A new exchange occurs
At that point where all light disappears;
A new and unsought state is needed:
The soul has
what it did not love,
And is stripped of all it possessed, no matter how dear.”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

The Lauds

Love, Soul, Light

“The south repudiates the idea that a pecuniary dependence on the federal government is one of the legitimate means of holding the states together. A moneyed interest in the government is essentially a base interest; and just so far as it operates to bind the feelings of those who are subjected to it to the government,—just so far as it operates in creating sympathies and interests that would not otherwise exist,—is it opposed to all the principles of free government, and at war with virtue and patriotism. Sir, the link which binds the public creditors, as such, to their country, binds them equally to all governments, whether arbitrary or free. In a free government, this principle of abject dependence, if extended through all the ramifications of society, must be fatal to liberty.”

Robert Hayne (1791–1839) American politician

Hayne's Speech on Mr. Foot's Resolution, January 21, 1830, page 9.

Money, War, Feeling, Idea

“We had a very respectable force, as to numbers; between eight and nine thousand, rank and file, upon the ground; but of these we attempted to select a particular corps to possess ourselves of the enemy's lines, partly by force, and partly by stratagem; but w r e could not make up the necessary number that was thought sufficient to warrant the attempt, which was five thousand, including the Continental and State troops. This body was to consist of men, who had been in actual service before, not less than nine months. However, the men were not to be had, and, if they could have been found, there was more against it than for it. Colonel Laurens was to have opened the passage by landing within the enemy's lines, and getting possession of a redoubt at the head of Easton's beach. If we had failed in the attempt, the whole party must have fallen a sacrifice, for their situation would have been such that there was no possibility of getting off.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men

“[B]ending the system to the idea that the government in Washington should see the country as a bunch of competing racial and ethnic groups with no particular or meaningful attachment to place and community, whose only relationship to government is unmediated through state and local government, is precisely the sort of thinking that Arthur Schlesinger lamented… If it makes you sad that California doesn’t have more clout in the Senate, fine. But playing statistical games based on race and ethnicity is a pernicious way of approaching that problem.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Say No to a Parliament of Tribes (2018)

Sadness, Way, Game, Communication

“As a result of [my campaign's] discussions and other interactions with gay and lesbian voters across the state, I am more convinced than ever that as we seek to establish full equality for America's gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than Ted Kennedy.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Letter to Log Cabin Republicans Club, 1994 http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/01/08/400048/marriage-equality-opponent-mitt-romney-to-gay-people-i-dont-discriminate 1994 United States Senate campaign

“The Folkish State, conversely, must under no conditions annex Poles with the intention of wanting to make Germans out of them some day. On the contrary, it must muster the determination either to seal off these alien racial elements, so that the blood of its own Folk will not be corrupted again, or it must without further ado remove them and hand over the vacated territory to its own National Comrades.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

1920s, Zweites Buch (1928)

“The North Korean state is essentially two things: 1) a large money-laundering concern; 2) the world’s largest prison and slave labor camp. Now, however, it is a large money-laundering concern and prison camp that has additionally extorted its way to nuclear weapons. Any U. S. policy should begin and end with the knowledge of what North Korea really is. It is not a state engaged in the normal give-and-take of diplomacy, seeking "security assurances" in return for "denuclearization" or some other such deal conjured up by diplomats whose experience is in dealing with real countries who negotiate in good faith. Rather, North Korea has had a pretty good run with its current approach of extortion, criminality and the deprivation of its own people.”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/11/all_you_need_to_know_about_north_korea
North Korea is a nuclear criminal enterprise
Daniel Blumenthal
February 12, 2013
Foreign Policy
USA
February 13, 2013
http://web.archive.org/web/20130708033612/http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/11/all_you_need_to_know_about_north_korea
July 8, 2013
no

Money, People, World, Faith

“I’m tired of being told how bad America is by leftwing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won’t multiculturalism be beautiful?”

Robert A. Hall (1946) American politician

I'm Tired (February 19, 2009)

Women, People, Beauty, Way

“All that produces a strong excitation, all that modifies the preliminary state of the thoughts and the feelings, surely also modifies the mental and physical state of the individual, especially if it occurs with confidence, expectation, and concentration of mind. All these phenomena, however extraordinary they are, are only the result of a heightening of the intellectual functions or power, which we all have to an average degree in the ordinary or waking state.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Original Philosophy of Hypnotism The International College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Feeling, Confidence, Strong

“These issues are very complex and are best left to a full treatment of the principle of rectification. In the absence of such a treatment applied to a particular society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no considerations of rectification of injustice could apply to justify it. Although to introduce socialism as the punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might seem to be so great as to make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them.”

Robert Nozick book Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Source: (1974), p. 232 http://books.google.com/books?id=fVITAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT139

Past

“The old cliché about having all your eggs in one basket takes on new meaning with Canada and the United States, because there is something even more wrong about having all your eggs in someone else's basket. It is worse still if that country is much larger than you and worst of all if they don't have all their eggs in your basket. This is not a relationship. It is a dependency. Canada's survival will depend largely on its ability to change that dependency back into a relationship. And one of the key factors in doing that will be the redistribution of our trade. But we can't do that if we have no politicians willing to take the lead.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Change, Dependency, Country

“Western observers focus more on the regime's economic failures than the North Koreans themselves do. Remember that it was only in recent modern times that Western societies began expecting the state to secure constant economic growth and rising prosperity. Well into the 20th century people expected little more from the state than that it protect them from foreign powers, and expand the influence or territory of the nation. Prussia was remarkably like North Korea in many ways, yet we remember it as a very successful state. If we judge North Korea by its own standards — instead of by the communist standards we hope its people judge it by — we must admit it has performed very well.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

People, Hope, Way, Failure

“A good Judoka never anticipates his action in a match, but his mind is as clever as a polished mirror which enables him to foresee precisely anything to happen and he displays freedom of his physique to cope with any change. Such mental state and physical action are called sei or tranquility and do or action, sometimes they are called ju and go or tenderness and sturdiness, in and yo or negative and positive, etc.”

Kyuzo Mifune book The Canon of Judo

The Canon of Judo (1956, 1960)

Freedom, Change

“Progress is only possible by passing from a state of undifferentiated wholeness to differentiation of parts.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 3. Some System Concepts in Elementary Mathematical Consideration, p. 69

Parting

“Madison, by the way, had opposed both the bank and tariffs when Hamilton was Secretary of Treasury. He signed into law the Second Bank of the United States, and endorsed the tariff, said that it has been ratified by the people in subsequent elections, so he reversed his position on that.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Rebuttal

People, Law, Way

“Well-ordered states and wise princes have taken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the people satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important objects a prince can have.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 19; translated by W. K. Marriot

People

“In short, once the RPF controlled the Rwandan state, it immediately turned its prodigious killing machine towards Zaire’s natural resources. This it may have done under cover of chasing the Hutu genocidaires, but the pillage of Zaire-the DRC worked out so well for the RPF that by the late 1990s it had “built up a self-financing war economy centered on mineral exploitation,” in the words of the UN Panel, with the pillage of resources so complete that it not only finances the RPF’s aggression, but generates annual surpluses back in Kigali as well. As the historian René Lemarchand sums up this system of blood and money: “It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that by turning a blind eye to the profits drawn from the looting of the Congo’s wealth, the international community... is tacitly encouraging a colonial enterprise in the best tradition of European imperialism.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Of course, what is true of the “international community,” is true of academics as well. Peterson and Herman, “Adam Jones on Rwanda and Genocide: A Reply” https://mronline.org/2010/08/14/adam-jones-on-rwanda-and-genocide-a-reply/, MR Online, August 14, 2010. 2010s

Money, War, Communication, Nature

“The Muslim Mashaikh were as keen on conversions as the Ulama, and contrary to general belief, in place of being kind to the Hindus as saints would, they too wished the Hindus to be accorded a second class citizenship if they were not converted. Only one instance, that of Shaikh Abdul Quddus Gangoh, need be cited because he belonged to the Chishtia Silsila considered to be the most tolerant of all Sufi groups. He wrote letters to Sultan Sikandar Lodi, Babur and Humayun to re-invigorate the Shariat and reduce the Hindus to payers of land tax and Jiziyah. To Babur he wrote,
“Extend utmost patronage and protection to theologians and mystics… that they should be maintained and subsidized by the state… No non-Muslim should be given any office or employment in the Diwan of Islam. Posts of Amirs and Amils should be barred to them. Furthermore, in confirmity with the principles of the Shariat they should be subjected to all types of indignities and humiliations. The non-Muslims should be made to pay Jiziyah, and Zakat on goods be levied as prescribed by the law. They should be disallowed from donning the dress of the Muslims and should be forced to keep their Kufr concealed and not to perform the ceremonies of their Kufr openly and freely… They should not be allowed to consider themselves equal to the Muslims.””

Abdul Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537) Sufi poet

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

Law

“When five men were captured in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee early in the morning on Saturday June 17, 1972 I had just completed a three-year stint as an assistant United States Attorney in Nashville. Ironically I had resigned the day before the break-in. I was about to become an unpaid political worker- the middle Tennessee director for the reelection campaign of Sen. Howard Baker.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

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At That Point in Time, Initial involvement

Men

“I am for lasting peace… United, I believe, we can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace, one with full recognition of the rights of the Jews in their one and only land: peace with security for generations and peace with a united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Ariel Sharon. "I an for lasting peace." at New York Post Forum, November 13, 2000, cited at Freeman.org http://www.freeman.org/m_online/dec00/sharon.htm, November 14, 2000. 2000s

People, Peace

“Hard systems viewpoints are basically those held by designers and engineers who are trying to create systems to meet an understood need in an effective and economic manner. Those in the soft camp caricature the approach as head-down, concerned with optimization, obsessed with quantitative metrics and highly pragmatic. So much so, in fact, that the term system thinking has been purloined by the soft camp as though they alone thought! The soft camp use the term engineer’s philosophy, not too endearingly, to describe the hard approach, in which the requirement is stated by a customer and the engineer satisfies the requirement without question.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 6; as cited in: Stuart Anderson (2006) "Heterogeneous Modelling of Evolution for Socio-technical Systems"

Optimism, Question, Thinking

Quotes about state page 73

Quotes about state
page 73