Quotes about status

A collection of quotes on the topic of statue, status, people, doing.

Quotes about status

“All sort of boundaries, be their gender, age, socio-economic status, physical or mental disabilities have to be eliminated.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Education for All People and Education for Life

Age

“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsiblity on the West Coast.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Death, Money, People

“I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

God, People, Idea, Housing

“Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined RSS wing of anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Family, Religion, History, Thinking

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

“A plaque and platinum status iIs whack if I’m not the baddest.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Till I Collapse"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

“Mary is the great mother. She is the mother. That's what Mary is. Whether she existed or not, is not the point. She exists at least as a hyper-reality. She exists as the mother. What's the sacrifice of the mother? That's easy: if you're a mother who's worth her salt, you offer your son to be destroyed by the world. That's what you do. And that's what's going to happen. He's going to be born, he's going to suffer, he's going to have his trouble in life, he's going to have his illnesses, he's going to face his failures and catastrophes, and he's going to die. That's what's going to happen, and if you're awake you know that, and then you say, 'well, perhaps he will live in a way that will justify that.' And then you try to have that happen. And that's what makes you worthy of a statue like [The Pieta]. 'Is it right to bring a baby into this terrible world?' Well, every woman asks herself that question. Some say no, and they have their reasons. Mary answers 'yes' voluntarily. Mary is the archetype of the woman who answers yes to life voluntarily. Not because she is blind. She knows what's going to happen. So, she's the archetypal representation of the woman who says yes to life knowing full well what life is. She's not naive. She's not someone who got pregnant in the backseat of a 1957 Chevy during one night of half-drunk idiocy. Not that. She does so consciously. Consciously, knowing what's to come. And then she allows it to happen, which is a testament to mothers.”

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

Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers
Concepts

Life, World, Way, Failure

“Next day, at the time of the noon prayer, we went out for seeing those places in Gwalior which we had not yet seen' Going out of the Hathipole Gate of the fort, we arrived at a place called Urwa'…'Solid rocks surround Urwa on three sides' On these sides people have carved statues in stone. They are in all sizes, small and big. A very big statue, which is on the southern side, is perhaps 20 yards high. These statues are altogether naked and even their private parts are not covered'…'Urwa is not a bad place. It is an enclosed space. Its biggest blemish is its statues. I ordered that they should be destroyed.”

Babur Baburnama

Baburnama, Translated from the Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi included in Mughal Kãlîna Bhãrata: Bãbur, Aligarh, 1960, In Goel, S.R. Hindu Temples - What happened to them

People, Time, Parting

“I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

This has usually been presented as something "said shortly before his death" without any definite source, but appears to be entirely spurious. The "FAQ about the life and thoughts of Albert Schweitzer" http://www.schweitzer.org/faq?lang=en#rasist asserts "This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans. Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this. It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook." This refers to some citations of it being from Afrikanische Geschichten (1938), which was translated as From My African Notebook (1939) by Mrs. C. E. B Russell <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, Men, Children, World

“When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

Men, Animals

“I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

World

“Each of us has been made “a little lower than the angels.” What an incomprehensible compliment! But it’s not only a compliment; it’s also a responsibility, for our special status equalizes us with other people in the eyes of God. The Lord has exalted not only me or some special group; God has exalted everyone. It’s the people of Burkina Faso and Niger and Guyana and Haiti. It’s people who never learned to read and write or who live on fifty cents a day. All human beings have been made a little lower than the angels, and we have a responsibility to treat them accordingly.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

God, People, Angels, Learning

“United States: the country where liberty is a statue.”

Nicanor Parra (1914–2018) writer, poet, matematician, fisic

Source: Artefactos

Country

“Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Freedom

“They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Wisdom, Intelligence, Success, Envy

“Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.
Aristocracy with the meaning - the best are ruling.
Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its "people's sovereignty" the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Jedes Zeitalter wird, wenn es historischen Rang hat, von Aristokratien gestaltet.
Aristokratie = die Besten herrschen.
Niemals regieren Völker sich selbst. Diesen Wahnsinn hat der Liberalismus erfunden. Hinter seiner Volkssouveränität verstecken sich nur die gerissensten Schelme, die nicht erkannt sein wollen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

People, Age

“The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state”

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) Arab historiographer and historian

in Spain
As quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.

People, Animals, Personality, Wealth

“When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Appearance

“The system in place in the countries of the historic imperialist triad (the United States, Western Europe, Japan) is based on the exercise of the absolute power of the national financial oligarchies concerned. They alone manage the whole of the national productive systems, having succeeded in reducing almost all small and medium-sized enterprises in agriculture, industry, and services to the status of subcontractors for the exclusive benefit of financial capital.”

Samir Amin (1931–2018) Egyptian economist

The Election of Donald Trump https://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/amin301116.html (30 November 2016), Monthly Review Magazine (MRzine)

Exercises, Country

“But then I ask myself, I have never truly known the man whose flank I have led one difficult and ascetic life for. Perhaps he has played with my idealism, taking advantage for dark scopes that he has held hidden within himself. How can I expect to know a man who has never opened his heart to me? Till now, I do not know what he really thought, knew or wanted. I was alone with my thoughts and my suspicions. And now, the veil that covered this statue has fallen to the ground and instead of an art work, a monster has revealed itself. Now we leave to the historians of the future the task of discussing if that statue was therefore a sin from the beginning, or was changed because of the circumstances. I continue to make the same error: I try to think back to his humble origins. But then I remember how many sons of these people have sealed their history with his name.”

Alfred Jodl (1890–1946) German general

About Hitler, Nuremberg Trial, March 10, 1946. Quoted in "Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader" by Percy Ernst Schramm.

Life, People, Art, Error

“The idea that an advanced civilization need not rest on slavery is a relatively new idea, for instance; it is a good deal younger than the Christian religion. But even if Chesterton's dictum were true, it would only be true in the sense that a statue is contained in every block of stone. Ideas may not change, but emphasis shifts constantly. It could be claimed, for example, that the most important part of Marx's theory is contained in the saying: ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ But before Marx developed it, what force had that saying had? Who had paid any attention to it? Who had inferred from it — what it certainly implies — that laws, religions and moral codes are all a superstructure built over existing property relations? It was Christ, according to the Gospel, who uttered the text, but it was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion — which, of course, is why they hate him so much.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please (25 February 1944) http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_01 <br class="br">"As I Please" (1943–1947)

Life, Hate, Religion, Law

“Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star act. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Black Coffee Blues

Jerk, Star, Thinking, Tear

“The evolvers are people who cause things to change. The maintainers of the status quo do everything to keep things from changing. And, there I see differences of perception. Differences in vision. Differences in interpretation, and differences in temperament, in personality. The number of evolvers are much fewer than the maintainers of the status quo. And amongst the evolvers, there are some who are initiators, some who go along with what other people recognize to be new or different.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

People, Change, Personality

“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

A further quote sometimes purported to be from a speech to Congress, January 7, 1790 purportedly in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790, this is actually a corruption of a statement made in his first State of the Union Address, relating to the need for maintaining governmental troops and military preparedness:
:: A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.
The proper establishment of the troops which may be deemed indispensable will be entitled to mature consideration. In the arrangements which may be made respecting it it will be of importance to conciliate the comfortable support of the officers and soldiers with a due regard to economy.
Misattributed, Spurious attributions

People

“He once begged alms of a statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, "To get practice in being refused."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

“Imitate the oak trees, stripped naked by the dark winter frost; who recover in the spring to resemble a powerful towering statue of emerald; and relate to its origin, consisting of soil, clouds, and dead plants.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1979

Tree, Dead, Spring, Relation ships

“Being alive is about messing up gloriously, and I will fight for that ability to gloriously mess up because I don't believe that humans are statues or sculptures.”

Alok Vaid-Menon (1991) American performance artist, and LGBTQ rights activist

Fight

“Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“If you want someone to be ignored, then build a life-size bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town…”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

Life

“The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.”

Alain de Botton book Status Anxiety

Source: Status Anxiety

Life

“The artist stands on the human being as a statue does on a pedestal.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings

“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Turns Fifty

Age, Religion

“Avoid those who seek friends in order to maintain a certain social status or to open doors they would not otherwise be able to approach.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“When the Statue of Liberty emerged from the mists I gazed at it with an awe close to the sublime. It seemed to me to be the embodiment of all the beauty and magnificence with which I had invested America in my dreams. I had been a little bit afraid that America wouldn't be what I had dreamed--and here was a dream come triumphantly true.”

Antonio Moreno (1887–1967) Spanish-American film actor and director

Beauty, Dreams

“In view of our strategic goal, and keeping in mind that objective conditions within "Western Armenia" have made it necessary to re-evaluate the future status of that region vis-a-vis the Armenians, we have argued that the much-vaunted "Free, Independent and United Armenia" is neither attainable nor preferable, from the position of the interests of the Armenian people. Propagating this chimerical goal only depletes our already limited human and material resources and wastes time which we cannot afford to waste.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 62.

People, Time, Future

“Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Part III, Chapter 11, Question Success, p. 135
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Question, Time

“With trembling hands, I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner… widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in… at first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker. Presently, details of the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand in suspense any longer, inquired anxiously "Can you see anything?", it was all I could do to get out the words "Yes, wonderful things".”

Howard Carter (1874–1939) British egyptologist

Tutankhamen and the Glint of Gold http://www.fathom.com/feature/190166/index.html<br>Diary, 26 November 1922.

Animals

“As for the moral status of majority rule, it must be pointed out that it allows for A and B to band together to rip off C, C and A in turn joining to rip off B, and then B and C conspiring against A, and so on.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe book Democracy: The God That Failed

Democracy - The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order (Transaction: 2001): 104.
Democracy: The God That Failed (2001)

“If I had written King Lear, I would regret it all my life afterwards. Because that work is so big, that its defects show as huge, its monstrous defects, things even minimal in between some scenes and their possible perfection. It's not the sun with spots; it's a broken greek statue.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 250
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Se eu tivesse escrito o Rei Lear, levaria com remorsos toda a minha vida de depois. Porque essa obra é tão grande, que enormes avultam os seus defeitos, os seus monstruosos defeitos, as coisas até mínimas que estão entre certas cenas e a perfeição possível delas. Não é o sol com manchas; é uma estátua grega partida.

Life, Sun, Perfection

“Even in childhood I watched the hours flow, independent of any reference, any action, any event, the disjunction of time from what was not itself, its autonomous existence, its special status, its empire, its tyranny. I remember quite clearly that afternoon when, for the first time, confronting the empty universe, I was no more than a passage of moments reluctant to go on playing their proper parts. Time was coming unstuck from being — at my expense.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Universe, Time, Parting, Childhood

“The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda http://books.google.com/books?id=9tQsg5ITfHsC&q=%22The+State+is+a+collection+of+officials+different+for+different+purposes+drawing+comfortable+incomes+so+long+as+the+status+quo+is+preserved+The+only+alteration+they+are+likely+to+desire+in+the+status+quo+is+an+increase+of+bureaucracy+and+the+power+of+bureaucrats%22&pg=PA134#v=onepage

Drawing

“We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. … If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived.”

Pelagius (360–420) British monk

Letter to Demetrias

Way, Understanding, Nature, Freedom

“To begin with, things [after Independence in 1980] went well because [Robert] Mugabe was no fool. He realised [that] it was important to maintain the economy and keep the country expanding. And in any case he was committed to do that by the Lancaster House Agreement which said that there could be no change in [the existing status] for at least seven years unless [he] could get 100% support [from] all the people. In no ways would he have been able to get the support of the white members of Parliament, and also the Matabeles. So we were satisfied that what we were doing was in keeping with the traditions and culture and what was expected of us, and Mugabe used to thank me for coming to see him, [giving] him the benefit of my advice and [telling] him what the white people were thinking. But he only did this for a while because he inherited the best economy in Africa. It was viable. And after two years he quickly changed his mind because he had a lot of money available. He had his [own] commanders in control because he had removed the white commanders who would have taken action against him if he had defied the Lancaster House Agreement before the seven-year [period]. He removed our commanders and put his commanders in so that he knew that he could defy this. And so he breached the Lancaster House Agreement.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith - A Bit Of A Rebel, Ian Smith

Money, People, Fools, Way

“I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister, who said that confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe, however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit requires still more time to arrive at maturity.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech of 9 November 1867.

Confidence, Time

“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”

Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) Canadian eductor

Source: Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), p. 83

Time, Past

“Will Trump go so far as to repeal NAFTA? If he did so he would render a great service to the peoples of Mexico and Canada by freeing them from their status as impotent vassals and encouraging them to engage in new directions based on the autonomy of their popular-sovereign projects. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the vast majority of Republican and Democratic representatives in the House and the Senate, all of whom have demonstrated an unconditional support of the interests of the American oligarchies, will allow Trump to go that far.”

Samir Amin (1931–2018) Egyptian economist

The Election of Donald Trump https://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/amin301116.html (30 November 2016), Monthly Review Magazine (MRzine)

People, Support, Housing

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Used in the Apple "Think Different" marketing campaign and sometimes attributed to Kerouac on the internet, perhaps because it evokes his famous quote from On the Road: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"" The original script was actuality written by Rob Siltanen with participation of Lee Clow. In "The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign" in Forbes (14 December 2011) http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/ Rob Siltanen states: "I wrote everything..." "I shared my scripts with Lee, and he thought they were good. He made a couple tweaks..." <br class="br">Misattributed

Motivational, People, World, Quotes

“I was solitary before, but now my solitariness becomes complete and awesome. Hence the dizziness, the vertigo. Like a statue on a plinth-that is how I live now. Jesus also was alone on the cross. I should not seek outside help to absolve me from my duty; my duty is too plain: decide, assume every responsibility for guiding others, even when it seems illogical and perhaps absurd. And to suffer alone… Me and God. The colloquy must be full and endless.”

Pope Paul VI (1897–1978) 262nd Pope of the Catholic Church

private note to himself of the solitude that infallibility and the papal office http://www.ucg.org/world-news-and-prophecy/hitlers-pope-the-roman-church-and-the-third-reich

God, Suffering, Help

“In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn to with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced "public good."”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State http://www.mises.org/etexts/intellectuals.asp (21 July 2006)

Wisdom, Men, Marriage, Family

“BASIC is to computation what QWERTY is to typing. Many teachers have learned BASIC, many books have been written about it, many computers have been built in such a way that BASIC is "hardwired" into them. In the case of the typewriter, we noted how people invent "rationalizations" to justify the status quo. In the case of BASIC, the phenomenon has gone much further, to the point where it resembles ideology formation. Complex arguments are invented to justify features of BASIC that were originally included because the primitive technology demanded them or because alternatives were not well enough known at the time the language was designed.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 1, Computers and Computer Cultures

People, Books, Way, Learning

“The Real is therefore simultaneously both the hard impenetrable kernel resisting symbolization and a pure chimerical entity which has in itself no ontological consistency. To use Kripkean terminology, the Real is the rock upon which every attempt at symbolization stumbles, the hard core which remains the same in all possible worlds (symbolic universes); but at the same time its status is thoroughly precarious; it is something that persists only as failed, missed, in a shadow, and dissolves itself as soon as we try to grasp it in its positive nature… like a traumatic event constructed backwards.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

190
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

World, Nature, Universe, Time

“The worship of the rational mind makes you prone to totalitarian ideology. The Catholic Church always warned against this. The warning was that the rational mind always falls in love with its own creations. The intellect is raised to the status of highest god. The highest ideal that a person holds – consciously or unconsciously – that's their god. It functions precisely in that manner. It exists forever, it exists in all people, it takes them over and exists in their behavior. That's a god. We have to think about that idea functionally.”

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

Other

Love, God, People, Behavior

“If any man could have discovered the utmost powers of the cannon, in all its various forms and have given such a secret to the Romans, with what rapidity would they have conquered every country and have vanquished every army, and what reward could have been great enough for such a service! Archimedes indeed, although he had greatly damaged the Romans in the siege of Syracuse, nevertheless did not fail of being offered great rewards from these very Romans; and when Syracuse was taken, diligent search was made for Archimedes; and he being found dead greater lamentation was made for him by the Senate and people of Rome than if they had lost all their army; and they did not fail to honour him with burial and with a statue.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

People, Secret, Search, Dead

“No honour was left for the gods, when Augustus chose to be himself worshipped with temples and statues, like those of the deities, and with flamens and priests.”
Nihil deorum honoribus relictum, cum se templis et effigie numinum per flamines et sacerdotes coli vellet.

Tacitus book Annals

Book I, 10; Church-Brodribb translation
Annals (117)

God

“[According to Habermas, the genesis of the bourgeois public sphere resulted from a combination of early capitalist commercial development and the organization of territorial … Representative publicness involved a re-presenting or staging for the purposes of display and acclamation, hence] this publicness (or publicity) of representation was not constituted as a social realm, that is, as a public sphere; rather, it was something like a status attribute, if this term may be permitted.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Source: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1963/1991, p. 7 as cited in: Benedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, Gary Remer (2004) Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy. p. 222

“There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.”

John le Carré book Smiley's People

Smiley's People (1979)

Change

“The peer review system is satisfactory during quiescent times, but not during a revolution in a discipline such as astrophysics, when the establishment seeks to preserve the status quo.”

Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Swedish electrical engineer and plasma physicist

Source: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents (1988), p. 197.

Time

“These oligarchies alone manage the political systems inherited from bourgeois electoral and representative democracy, having succeeded in domesticating the right and left electoral political parties, at the price of eroding the legitimacy of the democratic practice concerned. These oligarchies alone control the propaganda apparatuses, having succeeded in reducing the directors of news organizations including public broadcasters to the status of media clergy in their exclusive service. None of these aspects of the dictatorship of the oligarchy is challenged by the social and political movements at work in the triad, especially not in the United States.”

Samir Amin (1931–2018) Egyptian economist

The Election of Donald Trump https://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/amin301116.html (30 November 2016), Monthly Review Magazine (MRzine)

Democracy

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. "Think different" advertising company.
2000s

Motivational, People, World, Quotes

“This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from the assumption that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State — to each State of our Federal Union. Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence, and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence, excepting Texas; and even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never designated a State. The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the Union, while that name was first adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of Independence. Therein the "United Colonies" were declared to be "free and independent States;" but even then the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another or of the Union, but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge and their mutual action before, at the time, and afterwards abundantly show. The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual is most conclusive. Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the States, but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions. What is a "sovereignty" in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it "a political community without a political superior"? Tested by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty; and even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union, by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution to be for her the supreme law of the land. The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact, it created them as States. Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and in turn the Union threw off their old dependence for them and made them States, such as they are. Not one of them ever had a State constitution independent of the Union. Of course it is not forgotten that all the new States framed their constitutions before they entered the Union, nevertheless dependent upon and preparatory to coming into the Union.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Faith, Law, Communication, Sense

“Talk is abroad about removing statues of 'Confederates', meaning prominent Democrats, from the U. S. Capitol and some state capitols. The statue of Democrat Jefferson Davis, the ex-president of the Confederacy who also served as a Democratic Congressman, U. S. Senator, and Secretary of War in a Democratic administration, has been mentioned for possible removal from its place in Kentucky’s state capitol. Interesting. A growing mass call to remove the names of one prominent Democrat after another from the public square. One has to ask? Is it time to rename the Woodrow Wilson Bridge that crosses the Potomac from Virginia to Washington, the latter a majority black city? If so, may I suggest the name of Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first black U. S. Senator, in 1870? Oh, yes. Senator Revels was also a Republican.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Jeff Lord, "Will Democrats Apologize for Slavery and Segregation?" https://web.archive.org/web/20150630102356/http://spectator.org/articles/63244/will-democrats-apologize-slavery-and-segregation (25 June 2015), Knowing What We Know Now, The American Spectator.

War, Time

“So we can all appreciate our own identities, our bloodlines, our beliefs, our backgrounds -- that tapestry is what makes us who we are. But the history of Africa -- which is both the cradle of human progress and a crucible of conflict -- shows us that when define ourselves narrowly, in opposition to somebody just because they’re of a different tribe, or race, or religion -- and we ignore who is a good person or a bad person, are they working hard or not, are they honest or not, are they peaceful or violent -- when we start making distinctions solely based on status and not what people do, then we're taking the wrong path and we inevitably suffer in the end. This is why Martin Luther King called on people to be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. And in the same way, people should not be judged by their last name, or their religious faith, but by their content of their character and how they behave. Are they good citizens? Are they good people?”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

People, Peace, Faith, Religion

“At the same time, new difficulties are constantly surfacing: experiences of failure and the human weaknesses which bring so much pain. We all know from experience that sometimes a task does not bring the satisfaction we seek, results are few and changes are slow, and we are tempted to grow weary. Yet lowering our arms momentarily out of weariness is not the same as lowering them for good, overcome by chronic discontent and by a listlessness that parches the soul. It also happens that our hearts can tire of the struggle because in the end we are caught up in ourselves, in a careerism which thirsts for recognition, applause, rewards and status. In this case we do not lower our arms, but we no longer grasp what we seek, the resurrection is not there. In cases like these, the Gospel, the most beautiful message that this world can offer, is buried under a pile of excuses.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 277
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Pain, World, Beauty, Soul

“When Miss Nochlin says: 'If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is.' Well, I think the status quo in the arts is fine as it is - in this country [America] at least, women have exactly the same chance that men do. There are the same schools, museums, galleries, books, art stores. There are no obstacles in the way of a woman becoming a painter or sculptor other than the usual obstacles that any artist has to face.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

n. p.
1950 - 1971, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists' - Rosalyn Drexler with Elaine de Kooning (1971)

Women, Men, Books, School

“Whether you’re a vegan or not, there are endless reasons why we should all be delighted that the movement has grown so fast in the last few years. … Through adapting their diets to make sure they get all the vitamins they need, to pressuring big corporations and governments for more ethical products, vegans are giving food the focus it deserves. They are also doing their bit to reduce food miles and emissions … They’re teaching us a thing or two as well. My vegan and vegetarian friends have cooked me some fantastic meals, many of which I now make regularly. It’s saving me money, encouraging me to eat more vegetables, and reducing my meat intake. While I have no plans to give up meat, I recognise that it shouldn’t be the focus of my diet. I am now vegetarian every other day – not consciously, but because lots of my favourite meals are meat-free. I have also learnt lots of new techniques as I work around the limits of reducing dairy and meat products. I make cakes without eggs, burgers without beef, and pastry without butter. I … refuse to buy any animal product that doesn’t have a guarantee of quality such as Freedom Food, free range or organic status.”

Jamie Oliver (1975) British chef and media personality

"World Vegan Month is good for everyone" https://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-features/features/world-vegan-month-is-good-for-everyone/, JamieOliver.com (November 3, 2014).

Money, Food, Freedom, Animals

“In late June, my mother moved out of the Summit Town Homes and bought a house in West Hills. It was the first time my mother bought a house, as she had only rented in the past. The house had recently undergone a renovation, so it was practically brand new. The house had a swimming pool and was located in a nice enough area, though I would have still preferred it if my mother had gotten married to a wealthy man and moved into a mansion. I still continued to pester her to do this, and she still stubbornly refused. I will always resent my mother for refusing to do this. If not for her sake, she should have done it for mine. Joining a family of great wealth would have truly saved my life. I would have a high enough status to attract beautiful girlfriends and live above all of my enemies. All of my horrific troubles would have been eased instantly. It is very selfish of my mother to not consider this.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Perspective on incelness

Life, Family, Beauty, Home

““Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.””

Octavia E. Butler book Adulthood Rites

Part II “Phoenix” chapter 4 (p. 329).
Adulthood Rites (1988)

Fear, Way, Behavior, Feeling

“Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue.”

Bruce Dickinson (1958) English musician, airline pilot, and broadcaster

http://www.ironmaiden.com/index.php?categoryid=8&p2_articleid=917

“More often than not, the classes of objects encountered in the real physical world do not have precisely deﬁned criteria of membership. For example, the class of animals clearly includes dogs, horses, birds, etc. as its members, and clearly excludes such objects as rocks, ﬂuids, plants, etc. However, such objects as starfish, bacteria, etc. have an ambiguous status with respect to the class of animals. The same kind of ambiguity arises in the case of a number such as 10 in relation to the “class” of all real numbers which are much greater than 1.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Source: 1960s, Fuzzy sets (1965), p. 338

World, Dogs, Bird, Animals

“To accomplish the majestically practical work, to shape the whole architecture like a statue, base nothing on impossible modifications of human nature; await nothing from pity.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light

Nature

“Even with all our technological accomplishments and urban sophistication, we consider ourselves blessed, healed in some manner, forgiven, and for a moment transported into some other world, when we catch a passing glimpse of an animal in the wild: a deer in some woodland, a fox crossing a field, a butterfly in its dancing flight southward to its wintering region, a hawk soaring in the distant sky, a hummingbird come into our garden, fireflies signaling to each other in the evening. So we might describe the thousandfold moments when we experience our meetings with the animals in their unrestrained and undomesticated status. Such incidents as these remind us that the universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not of objects to be exploited.”

Thomas Berry (1914–2009) American priest

Source: Evening Thoughts, Chapter 3, pp. 37-38

World, Communication, Universe, Distant

“[I've changed a bit here - see youtube video "Jordan Peterson - Are YOU Antisocial?!"] We have these shared frames of reference, like when we're playing monopoly. Children at three learn to play games, which means that they learn to organize their own internal motivational states into a hierarchy that includes the emotional states of other people. And that means they can play. And that's what everyone does when they're out in the world. That's why we can go about our daily business - we all know the rules. That's why we can sit in the same room without fighting each other. Because you're smart and socially conscious, you can walk into a room full of people and know what to do. If you're civilized and social you can just do it, and you can predict what all the other primates are up to, and they won't kill you. That's what it means to be part of the same tribe. People are very peculiar creatures and God only knows what they're up to. As long as they're playing the same game that you are, you don't have to know what they're up to, and you can predict what they're going to do because you understand their motivational states. And so, part of the building and constructing of higher order moral goals is the establishment of joint frames of reference that allow multiple people to pursue the goals that they're interested in simultaneously. Not all shared frames of reference can manage that. There's a small subset of them that are optimized so that not only can multiple people play them, but multiple people can play them, AND enjoy them, AND do it repeatedly across a long period of time. So it's iterability that partly defines the utility of a higher order moral structure, and that is not arbitrary. It's an emergent property of biological interactions. It's not arbitrary at all, because a lot of what's constraining your games is your motivational substructure and those ancient circuits that are status oriented, which operate within virtually every animal. Virtually every animal has a status counter. Creatures organize themselves into dominance hierarchies. The reason they do that is because that works. It's a solution to the Darwinian problem of existence. It's not just an epiphenomena. It's the real thing. So your environment is fundamentally dominance hierarchy, plus God only knows where you are. And that's order and chaos. And part of the reason people fight to preserve their dominance hierarchies is because it's better to be a slave who knows what the hell is going on than someone who is thrown screaming and naked into the jungle at night. And that's the difference between order and chaos. And we like order better than chaos and it's no wonder. And invite a little chaos in for entertainment now and then, but it has to be done voluntarily, and generally you don't want the kind of chaos that upsets your entire conceptual structure. You're willing to fool around on the fringes a little bit, but you know, when the going gets serious you're pretty much likely to bail out.”

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

Concepts

God, Children, People, World

“A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue", p. 185
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

People, World, Imagination, Reading

“Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Of Idolatry
A short Schem of the true Religion

God, Religion, Soul, Memory

“I learnt to see philosophical systems in the context of the social milieu which produced them. I therefore learnt to look for social contention in philosophical systems. It is of course possible to see the history of philosophy in diverse ways, each way of seeing it being in fact an illumination of the type of problem dealt with in this branch of human thought. It is possible, for instance, to look upon philosophy as a series of abstract systems. When philosophy is so seen, even moral philosophers, with regrettable coyness, say that their preoccupation has nothing to do with life. They say that their concern is not to name moral principles or to improve anybody's character, but narrowly to elucidate the meaning of terms used in ethical discourse, and to determine the status of moral principles and ru1es, as regards the obligation which they impose upon us. When philosophy is regarded in the light of a series of abstract systems, it can be said to concern itself with two fundamental questions: first, the question 'what there is'; second, the question how 'what there is' may be explained. The answer to the first question has a number of aspects. It lays down a minimum number of general under which every item in the world can and must be brought. It does this without naming the items themselves, without furnishing us with an inventory, a roll-call of the items, the objects in the world. It specifies, not particu1ar objects, but the basic types of object. The answer further implies a certain reductionism; for in naming only a few basic types as exhausting all objects in the world, it brings object directly under one of the basic types.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Source: Consciencism (1964), Philosophy In Retrospect, pp. 5-6.

Life, World, Way, History

“If you meet with any one who is virtuous do not drive him from you; do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and be reduced to hiding in hermitages, or caves or other solitary places to escape from your treachery; if there is such an one among you do him honour, for these are our Saints upon earth; these are they who deserve statues from us, and images…”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

“Society or culture or whatever you might want to call it, has created us all solely and wholly for the purpose of maintaining its continuity and status quo.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Source: Thought is Your Enemy (1990), Chapter II: Throw Away Your Crutches

“We may do different jobs and wear different uniforms, and hold different views than the person beside us. But as Americans, we all share the same proud title — we are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter of our American story.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Fifth State of the Union Address (February 2013)

Way, Idea, Future, Personality

“When I was a naive young recruit in Spain, I used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off statues and defecated into grand pianos. I now understand: it was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform — uncontrollable fear.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Harold Ryan"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

Men, Fear, Understanding, Painting

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life, World, Penalty, Way

“If, when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statue to him in the one case and to hang him in the other.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Doctrine of Free Will"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

“The visas came through in 1955, when I was 15. That June, we sailed for New York aboard the Conte Biancamano. When we passed the Statue of Liberty, Anna Maria [my sister] tried to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner".”

Mario Andretti (1940) Italian-American racing driver

"Coming to America -- In the Fast Lane," "House Call," "Mansion," The Wall Street Journal (3 August 2018), M1
2010s

Star, Sister, Singing

“The peasantry, having lifted itself up out of its medieval status, cannot politically generate it's own rage. — Speech in Paris, 1934”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Rage

“It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the Author of them.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Life, God, School, Error

“The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Novalis (1829)

Light

“In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Referring to the lack of established culture and the established institution of slavery in the United States, in "Review of Seybert’s Annals of the United States", published in The Edinburgh Review (1820)
Context: In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? Or what old ones have they advanced? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? Who drinks out of American glasses? Or eats from American plates? Or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

Books, Reading

“Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7
Context: Life can be better for women - economic and political conditions improved - and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, in deed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the conditions of women. Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self-determination. This means that women have less freedom.

Women, Men, Change

“It did not last: the devil, shouting "Ho.
Let Einstein be," restored the status quo.”

J. C. Squire (1884–1958) British poet, writer, historian, and literary editor

"In continuation of Pope on Newton" from Poems (1926); Squire is here extending upon the famous statement of Alexander Pope:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! — and all was light.
As quoted in The Epigrammatists : A Selection from the Epigrammatic Literature of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern Times (1875) by Henry Philip Dodd, p. 329.

“What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Solidarity in Liberty: The Workers' Path to Freedom (1867)
Context: What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society. The outcast is my daily menace. Whether I am Pope, Czar, Emperor, or even Prime Minister, I am always the creature of their circumstance, the conscious product of their ignorance, want and clamoring. They are in slavery, and I, the superior one, am enslaved in consequence.

Men, Imagination, Appearance

“One who has drunk at the fountain of spiritual happiness says good-by of his own accord to the satisfactions that come from a higher professional status”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Source: The Absorbent Mind (1949), Ch. 27 : The Teacher's Preparation, p. 283; part of this has become paraphrased as :
Context: One who has drunk at the fountain of spiritual happiness says good-by of his own accord to the satisfactions that come from a higher professional status … What is the greatest sign of success for a teacher thus transformed? It is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."

Happiness

“The age of personal statues is gone.”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

"The Edict of Chandigarh," 1959
Context: The age of personal statues is gone. No personal statues shall be erected in the city or parks of Chandigarh. The city is planned to breathe the new sublimated spirit of art. Commemoration of persons shall be confined to suitably placed bronze plaques.

Age, Personality

“While the Ottomans moved into South-East Europe, the Moghul invasion of India destroyed much of Hindu and Buddhist civilization there. The recent destruction by Moslems in Afghanistan of colossal Buddhist statues is a reminder of what happened to temples and shrines, on an enormous scale, when Islam took over.”

V.S. Naipaul book India: A Wounded Civilization

India: A Wounded Civilization (1977)

“The myth of childhood has an even greater parallel in the myth of Femininity. Both women and children were considered asexual and thus"purer" than man. Their inferior status was ill-concealed under an elaborate "respect."”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

One didn't discuss serious matters nor did one curse in from of women and children; one didn't openly degrade them, one did it behind their backs.

Chapter Four
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Childhood, Children, Women