Quotes about steel

A collection of quotes on the topic of steel, likeness, use, men.

Quotes about steel

James Baldwin photo

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
George Orwell photo
Ferdowsi photo
Eugene O'Neill photo
Pierre Joseph Proudhon photo

“I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

"The Authority Principle" in No Gods, No Masters : An Anthology of Anarchism (1980) Daniel Guérin, as translated by Paul Sharkey (1998), p. 90
Context: I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.

Cassandra Clare photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Clarice Lispector photo
Leon Trotsky photo

“A sledgehammer breaks glass but forges steel.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

"We do not change our course" (1938)

Statius photo

“Hear oh hear, if my prayer be worthy and such as you yourself might whisper to my frenzy. Those I begot (no matter in what bed) did not try to guide me, bereft of sight and sceptre, or sway my grieving with words. Nay behold (ah agony!), in their pride, kings this while by my calamity, they even mock my darkness, impatient of their father's groans. Even to them am I unclean? And does the sire of the gods see it and do naught? Do you at least, my rightful champion, come hither and range all my progeny for punishment. Put on your head this gore-soaked diadem that I tore off with my bloody nails. Spurred by a father's prayers, go against the brothers, go between them, let steel make partnership of blood fly asunder. Queen of Tartarus' pit, grant the wickedness I would fain see.”
Exaudi, si digna precor quaeque ipsa furenti subiceres. orbum visu regnisque carentem non regere aut dictis maerentem flectere adorti, quos genui quocumque toro; quin ecce superbi —pro dolor!—et nostro jamdudum funere reges insultant tenebris gemitusque odere paternos. hisne etiam funestus ego? et videt ista deorum ignavus genitor? tu saltem debita vindex huc ades et totos in poenam ordire nepotes. indue quod madidum tabo diadema cruentis unguibus abripui, votisque instincta paternis i media in fratres, generis consortia ferro dissiliant. da, Tartarei regina barathri, quod cupiam vidisse nefas.

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 73

H.P. Lovecraft photo
Barack Obama photo
Tomáš Baťa photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Alexander Suvorov photo
Robert J. Marks II photo

“[Computer] programs to demonstrate Darwinian evolution are akin to a pinball machine. The steel ball bounces around differently every time but eventually falls down the little hole behind the flippers.”

Robert J. Marks II (1950) American electrical engineering researcher and intelligent design advocate

It's a lot easier to play pinball than it is to make a pinball machine. (A comment concerning the difficulty of a "search for a good Darwinian search.")
Computer programs, including all of the models of Darwinian evolution of which I am aware, perform the way their programmers intended. Doing so requires the programmer infuse information about the program's goal. You can't write a good program without [doing so].
Your chances of winning the lottery are about the same whether or not you buy a ticket. It's better … if you give your money to me and I'll decide whether or not to give it back.
From the viewpoint of computer simulation, our universe does not contain the probabilistic resources to get a meaningful result for even a moderately sized unassisted [Darwinian] search. In fact, if you take ten to the one thousand of our universes in what is sometimes referred to as the multiverse, the probabilistic resources don't exist there either.
Let's abandon labels and pursue the truth no matter where it leads. Don't entrench yourself in a paradigm and claim a corner on truth. Many who have done so in history have been shown to be foolish.
"Darwin as the Pinball Wizard: Talking Probability with Robert Marks,", From an interview with Robert Crowther of the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute, March 03, 2010, 2010-05-03 http://www.idthefuture.com/2010/03/darwin_as_the_pinball_wizard_t.html,

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs photo

“A physical-mental characteristic of mine is a certain passive magnetism of the animal world… The mental-physical passive animal magnetism mentioned is passive, not active, for the reason that the person for whom it is a characteristic does not attract, but rather feels himself attracted, just as a passive magnetism dwells in a piece of soft iron, since it does not attract, but is attracted by the steel magnet, whereas active magnetism is in the attracting steel magnet”

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) German jurist, writer and pioneer of LGBT human rights

perhaps a passive magnetism as well, but at least an active is there
Ulrichs in autobiographical manuscript of 1861, cited in Hubert Kennedy (1988), Ulrichs: The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement. Boston: Alyson. p. 44; As cited in: Kennedy (1997, 3)

Socrates photo
Thomas Paine photo
Plato photo
Henry Ford photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“Everything I loved had been dead for two centuries—or, as in the case of Graeco-Roman classicism, for two milenniums. I am never a part of anything around me—in everything I am an outsider. Should I find it possible to crawl backward through the Halls of Time to that age which is nearest my own fancy, I should doubtless be bawled out of the coffee-houses for heresy in religion, or else lampooned by John Dennis till I found refuge in the deep, silent Thames, that covers many another unfortunate. Yes, I seem to be a decided pessimist!—But pray do not think, gentlemen, that I am utterly forlorn and misanthropick creature. … Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me. Though not a participant in the Business of life; I am, like the character of Addison and Steele, an impartial (or more or less impartial) Spectator, who finds not a little recreation in watching the antics of those strange and puny puppets called men. A sense of humour has helped me to endure existence; in fact, when all else fails, I never fail to extract a sarcastic smile from the contemplation of my own empty and egotistical career!”

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

Letter to "The Keicomolo"—Kleiner, Cole, and Moe (October 1916), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 27
Non-Fiction, Letters

Otto Dix photo

“Lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, shells, bombs, underground caves, corpses, blood, liquor, mice, cats, gas, artillery, filth, bullets, mortars, fire, steel: that is what war is! It is all the work of the Devil!”

Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker

Quote from Dix' War Diary 1915–1916, Städtische Gallery, Albstadt, p. 25; as cited by Eva Karcher, Otto Dix, New York: Crown Publishers, 1987, p. 14

W.B. Yeats photo
Wendell Phillips photo

“What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind, and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

Anti-Slavery Speech (January 1852) http://books.google.com/books?id=SCpVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA22 Published in The Works of Wendell Phillips, Street & Smith (1902), p. 22-23
1850s

Eugene O'Neill photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Aurelius Augustinus photo

“To my God a heart of flame; To my fellow man a heart of love; To myself a heart of steel.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Attributed to Augustine by many sources on line, but without an actual reference.
Disputed

Wilkie Collins photo
Richelle Mead photo

“I'm steel-toed boots in a ballet-slipper world.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Sandman Slim

Yukio Mishima photo
Chuck Norris photo

“Men are like steel — when they lose their temper, they lose their worth.”

Chuck Norris (1940) American martial artist and actor

Though often attributed to Norris, this seems to have appeared as an anonymous proverb at least as early as 1961, in an edition of The Physical Educator
Misattributed

Euripidés photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Rachel Caine photo
Richelle Mead photo
Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Kevin Brockmeier photo
Temple Grandin photo

“The big companies are like steel and activists are like heat. Activists soften the steel, and then I can bend it into pretty grillwork and make reforms.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Source: Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

Jodi Picoult photo
Brandon Sanderson photo

“I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Steven Pressfield photo

“He who whets his steel, whets his courage”

Source: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

Ellen DeGeneres photo
Napoleon Hill photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Scott Westerfeld photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Eoin Colfer photo

“Look!" said Foaly, pointing with some urgency into the vast steel-gray gloom, "Someone who cares!”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

Henry Rollins photo
Alyson Nöel photo
Miranda July photo

“I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn’t laugh, I did not laugh. But I died, I did die.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Steven Pressfield photo

“You have never tasted freedom friend, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.”

Dienekes p. 60
Gates of Fire (1998)
Source: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

Nicholas Sparks photo
Michael Chabon photo

“Only love could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks.”

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Oliver Goldsmith photo

“Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 436.

Grant Morrison photo
Robinson Jeffers photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
John Keats photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Ralph Chaplin photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Muhammad of Ghor photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“The scar of fire, the dint of steel,
Are easier than Love's wounds to heal.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)

Bill Downs photo
Edmund Spenser photo
Wassily Leontief photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Parker Palmer photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Samuel Garth photo

“Some fell by laudanum, and some by steel,
And death in ambush lay in every pill.”

Samuel Garth (1661–1719) British writer

The Dispensary, Canto IV, line 62.

“The steel worker on the girder
Learned not to look down, and does his work
And there are words we have learned
Not to look at,
Not to look for substance
Below them. But we are on the verge
Of vertigo.”

George Oppen (1908–1984) American poet

"The Building of the Skyscraper" st. 1, 1965; Collected Poems of George Oppen", New Directions, 1976, ISBN 0-811-20615-7

H. G. Wells photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Alauddin Khalji photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“Instead of a government with steel in its backbone, we've got one with Steel in its pocket.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (14 October 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103443. The Labour government had entered into a Pact with the Liberal leader David Steel.
Leader of the Opposition

Clinton Edgar Woods photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Thomas Bailey Aldrich photo