Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)
Fran Lebowitz (1950) author and public speaker from the United States
Ruminator Magazine interview with Susannah McNeely (August/September 2005).
Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/apr/28/housing in the House of Commons (28 April 1987). <br class="br">1980s
Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher
"Kant", properly pronounced, sounds much like a vulgar "C-word" which is what he was mistaken for having said The Independent, The Independent, Professor Sidney Morgenbesser: Philosopher celebrated for his withering New York Jewish humour http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-sidney-morgenbesser-550224.html, 6 August 2004. The Times, Sidney Morgenbesser: Erudite and influential American linguistic philosopher with the analytical acuity of Spinoza and the blunt wit of Groucho Marx https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sidney-morgenbesser-5cz8gg8qfvm, September 8, 2004.
Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician
Torture, War, and Presidential Powers, June 15, 2004 http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul185.html <br class="br">2000s, 2001-2005
Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada
The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008
David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier
David Irving's Talk to the Clarendon Club http://www.fpp.co.uk/speeches/speech190992.html
Margaret Keane (1927) American artist
Interviewed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMK6aBSX2QY on The Mike Douglas Show (1972). <br class="br">1972
Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN
On being a lawyer, as quoted by Claire Birge in The Stevensons : A Biography of an American Family (1997) by Jean H. Baker, p. 262
Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral
William N. Jeffers, Acting Secretary of the Navy 1879
Historical Records and Studies, Vol. VI (1911)
“Get this to Grand Central Station as quick as you can!”
Steve Allen (1921–2000) American comedian, actor, musician and writer
Instructions to a cab-driver after racing out of his studio dressed as a policeman, and throwing a large salami into the backseat of his taxi. The driver sped off without a word.
George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States
2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1983/oct/26/grenada-invasion in the House of Commons (26 October 1983) during the debate on the American invasion of Grenada. <br class="br">1980s
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician
At the opening of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, 4 February 1893. Quoted in the Liverpool Echo of the same day, p. 3
1890s
William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist
Political Register (20 April 1805), quoted in Karl W. Schweizer and John W. Osborne, Cobbett and His Times (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990), pp. 27-28, 71-72.
Banesh Hoffmann (1906–1986) American mathematician and physicist
[Banesh Hoffmann, The strange story of the quantum: an account for the general reader of the growth of the ideas underlying our present atomic knowledge, Courier Dover Publications, 1959, 0486205185, 4]
Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/21/rent-officers in the House of Commons (21 March 1989). <br class="br">1980s
“At her station in life, wisdom dictated keeping a low profile.
And yet…”
David Brin book Glory Season
Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 3 (p. 61)
M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director
Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)
Jaime Jackson (1947) Horse hoof care professional
The Natural Horse (1997)
“Join me later today for this "Rest of the Story" story … over this ABC Radio Network station.”
Paul Harvey (1918–2009) American broadcaster
Regular tag lines
George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention
Article 5
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 15.
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution
As quoted in Tasks of Revolutionary Army Contingents, Collected Works, Vol. 9, pages. 420-24.
Attributions
William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom
Speech in Edinburgh (30 June 1892), quoted in The Times (1 July 1892), p. 12.
1890s
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 20.
1934
April Winchell (1960) American voice actor and writer
KFI-Los Angeles radio broadcast, January 28, 2001, 10:00 p.m. hour.
Mitt Romney book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness
Source: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, 2010, Chapter 8, pg. 196
Aaron Sorkin (1961) American screenwriter, producer, playwright
before you decide to listen to it and like it or not.
Interview for Comedy Central.
Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist
"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s
Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_and_this_is_a_thing/
Rudyard Kipling Arithmetic on the Frontier
Arithmetic on the Frontier, Stanza 3.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)
Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist
Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 45: Cited in: "Railway Engineering in the United States" in The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858. p. 651
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist
The Chimes http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/english/1800-1899/dickens-chimes-379.txt, Second Quarter (1844)
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement
Original Italian text:
Noi canteremo le grandi folle agitate dal lavoro, dal piacere o dalla sommossa: canteremo le maree multicolori e polifoniche delle rivoluzioni nelle capitali moderne; canteremo il vibrante fervore notturno degli arsenali e dei cantieri incendiati da violente lune elettriche; le stazioni ingorde, divoratrici di serpi che fumano; le officine appese alle nuvole pei contorti fili dei loro fumi; i ponti simili a ginnasti giganti che scavalcano i fiumi, balenanti al sole con un luccichio di coltelli; i piroscafi avventurosi che fiutano l'orizzonte, le locomotive dall'ampio petto, che scalpitano sulle rotaie, come enormi cavalli d'acciaio imbrigliati di tubi, e il volo scivolante degli aereoplani, la cui elica garrisce al vento come una bandiera e sembra applaudire come una folla entusiasta.
Source: 1900's, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909, p. 52 : Last bullet-item in THE MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776)
Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician
As quoted in "Did I say This? in The Observer (20 April 2008)
2008
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)
Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist
Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 51-52 about the "System of reports and checks"; Partly cited in Chandler (1977, p. 103)
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
Presidential proclamation of a national day of fasting and prayer (6 March 1799)
1790s
Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut
The Dallas Morning News staff (July 28, 1986) "People", The Dallas Morning News, p. 2A.
Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) English theologian, chemist, educator, and political theorist
Memoirs of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestly (1809), p. 41
Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman
Song lyrics, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean (1973)
Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12
Context: It is of great advantage that man should know his station, and not imagine that the whole universe exists only for him. We hold that the universe exists because the Creator wills it so; that mankind is low in rank as compared with the uppermost portion of the universe, viz., with the spheres and the stars; but, as regards the angels, there cannot be any real comparison between man and angels, although man is the highest of all beings on earth; i. e., of all the beings formed of the four elements.
Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers
No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: There is yet a further and a weightier reason for the permanency of the Judicial offices, which is deducible from the nature of the qualifications they require. It has been frequently remarked, with great propriety, that a voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free Government. To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the Courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable bulk, and must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them. Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society, who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of Judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge. These considerations apprize us, that the Government can have no great option between fit characters; and that a temporary duration in office, which would naturally discourage such characters from quitting a lucrative line of practice to accept a seat on the Bench, would have a tendency to throw the administration of justice into hands less able, and less well qualified, to conduct it with utility and dignity.
Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)
1970s, Remarks on pardoning Nixon (1974)
Context: I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans, whatever their station or former station. The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.
The facts, as I see them, are that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society.
During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.
Halford E. Luccock (1885–1960) American Methodist minister
As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude
Context: There is a major disaster when a person allows some success to become a stopping place rather than a way station on to a larger goal. It often happens that an early success is a greater moral hazard than an early failure.
Timothy Leary book Flashbacks
Source: Flashbacks, An Autobiography (1983), p. 388
Context: While sitting in my prison cell, I was astonished to hear the local rock station play a new song by the Beatles entitled "Come Together." Although the new version was certainly a musical and lyrical improvement on my campaign song, I was a bit miffed that Lennon had passed me over this way. (I must explain that even the most good-natured persons tend to be a bit touchy about social neglect while in prison). When I sent a mild protest to John, he replied with typical Lennon charm and wit: that he was a tailor and I was a customer who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone else.
Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author
Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)
U Thant (1909–1974) 3rd Secretary-General of the United Nations
Portfolio for Peace (1968), p. 92
Context: Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves. This, as the sages of many lands have taught us, is a golden rule in individual and group, as well as international, relations.
Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge
"Proceedings in Memory of Justice Brandeis" (1942).
Extra-judicial writings
Context: The day has clearly gone forever of societies small enough for their members to have personal acquaintance with one another, and to find their station through the appraisal of those who have first hand knowledge of them. Publicity is an evil substitute and the art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, every year adds to its potency and to the finality of its judgments. The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country whether we like it or not, we must learn to accept it.
George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar
M. Aurelius Antoninus
Context: A man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, not yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor [Marcus Aurelius] says he should not, about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does.
William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his beliefs with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.
It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with — if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.
Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author
What an idiot!
Cosmic Jam (tour 1995, DVD 2005, 2006)
Mansur Al-Hallaj (858–922) Persian mystic, revolutionary writer and teacher of Sufism
As quoted in "Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj" at Sidi Muhammad Press http://www.sufimaster.org/teachings/husayn.htm <br class="br">Context: Love is in the pleasure of possession, but in the Love of Allah there is no pleasure of possession, because the stations of the Reality are wonderment, the cancelling of the debt which is owed, and the blinding of vision. The Love of the human being for God is a reverence which penetrates the very depths of his being, and which is not permitted to be given except to Allah alone. The Love of Allah for the human being is that He Himself gives proof of Himself, not revealing Himself to anything that is not He.
Colin Wilson book The Occult: A History
Source: The Occult: A History (1971), p. 28
Context: Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 14; Variant: A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study but war and it organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.
Context: A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.
Edmund Burke book A Vindication of Natural Society
A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
Context: The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer
Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: I pray the Sovereign Sun himself to grant me ability to explain the nature of the station that he holds amongst those in whose middle he is placed! By the term "middle" we are to understand not what is so defined in the case of things contrary to each other, as "equi-distant from the extremes," as orange and dark brown in the case of colours; lukewarm, in that of hot and cold, and other things of the sort; but the power that collects and unites into one things dispersed, like the "Harmony" of Empedocles, from which he completely excludes all discord and contention.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Context: I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819–1901) British monarch who reigned 1837–1901
Extract from the Queen's Journal, Tuesday, 20th June 1837.
Context: Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have.
Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 1
Jeanine Áñez (1967) President of Bolivia
Clifford Krauss https://www.nytimes.com/by/clifford-krauss, in ‘I Assume the Presidency’: Bolivia Lawmaker Declares Herself Leader https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/world/americas/evo-morales-mexico-bolivia.html, The New York Times, (12 November 2019) <br class="br">About
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist
"Host: Deep into the mercenary world of take-no-prisoners political talk radio." The Atlantic, April 2005.
Essays
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to John Jay from Paris, France (January 25, 1786). Source: “ From Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 25 January 1786 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-09-02-0190,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 9, 1 November 1785 – 22 June 1786, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954, p. 215.] <br class="br">1780s
Michael Parenti (1933) American academic
Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 3, p. 33
Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer
The Labour Case (Penguin, 1959), p. 11
1950s
Joseph Wu (1954) Taiwanese politician
Joseph Wu (2019) cited in " Foreign minister urges genuine democratic elections in Hong Kong http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201907220012.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 22 July 2019.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic
al-Ghazali https://awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/35-inspirational-imam-al-ghazali-quotes-on-success/
Con Houlihan (1925–2012) Irish sportswriter
The Evening Press, 25 September 1978. As reprinted https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/con-houlihan-paddy-dashed-back-to-his-goal-like-a-woman-who-smells-a-cake-burning--26885274.html in the Irish Independent following Houlihan's death.
Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter One, The Conspiracy
Tommy Robinson (1982) English right-wing activist
Police probe threats made to EDL founder Tommy Robinson https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-42816348 BBC News (25 January 2018) <br class="br">2018
K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India
I asked. "Oh, nothing. I accidentally dropped one of the pair at the platform... I can't get it back... What is the use of my keeping one when the man who finds the first will need both?
His wife Usha Narayanan
A remarkable life-story
Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo
Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 24.
Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) Indian musician and sitar player
By the world's most performed opera composer Benjamin Britten quoted in Letter found from Britain's greatest opera composer's drawer shows his love for Ravi Shankar, 2 October 2013, Official website of Ravishnkar Organization http://www.ravishankar.org/,
Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer
AT The Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California after some balloons bearing a radio station's logo floated on stage. <br class="br">Chonin, Neva (2005). "White Stripes huge but not bloated" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/15/DDGTAE7B261.DTL&type=music SFGate.com (accessed June 19, 2007) <br class="br">2010
Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)
Letter to John Quincy Adams (19 January 1780)
Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet
Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 41-42. First Stanza, lines 1-10 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up <br class="br">The Poem of Labīd (translated by C. J. Lyall in 1881)
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (31 March 1809), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1871), edited by H. A. Washington, Vol. 8, p. 165 https://www.bartleby.com/73/778.html <br class="br">1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
1990s, Memoirs (1995)