Quotes about step
page 18

Max Beerbohm photo

“Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir,
Albeit to see you I’m unglad.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

A Luncheon

W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“In Paris, I quickly mastered the Foxtrot, the Shimmy and the One Step, [he liked the Shimmy best:] At first, the heel-toe was sort of tricky. Nowadays, they find ways around it.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in Mondrian's letter to Theo van Doesburg, undated, c. 1917/18; as cited in 'Mondrian's World: From Primary Colors to the Boogie Woogie Footsteps' by Nina Stegal, 24 MAY, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/travel/piet-mondrian-netherlands-abstract-painter-de-stijl-design.html?em_pos=medium&emc=edit_li_20170527&nl=nyt-living&nl_art=1&nlid=78029813&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0
1910's

Emil M. Cioran photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Isadora Duncan photo
Vytautas Juozapaitis photo

“Bad boys have long fascinated audiences as well as storytellers, whatever the medium. Such rebels, often without causes beyond self-gratification, have been at the center of much of contemporary popular culture. One of the paradigms for such dramatized morality tales is Mozart's magnificent "Don Giovanni," whose musical and theatrical turns evoked awe and laughter and terror from the more that 1,500 music fans who on Saturday night flocked to Lawrence's Lied Center for the Mozart Festival Opera production. The libertine is thoroughly disreputable. Nonetheless, we look on in fascination because of his devilish smile, dashing good looks, ready wit, and the audacity of his hyper-inflated ego. If you can imagine a young Jack Nicholson with mustache, cape and a flair for sword play, you've got it. Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis gave the Don appropriate swagger and voice. He also brought a comic twist that gave the roué a touch of the trickster. Stepping out of character for a second in the midst of a briskly paced recitative, he paused, turned, and looked up at the supertitled English translation as if to check his lines. It was a joke shared by all. The pleasure of performing, even in the opera's most dramatic moments, was evident.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Chuck Berg, "Mozart's 'Don Giovanni' triumphs", Topeka Capital Journal (February, 2007) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Patrick Dixon photo
Eugene Cernan photo
Sergey Lavrov photo

“We think that additional steps, including the cancellation of the no-fly zone, should be taken.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Time to abolish no-fly zone over Libya, (September 2011). http://rt.com/politics/official-word/lavrov-us-adress-libya-511/

Bill de Blasio photo

“Tonight we took another big step toward a fairer city for all, tonight another ratification of all that we’ve been doing together and it’s going to give us the fuel to go farther.”

Bill de Blasio (1961) American politician and mayor of New York City

said at a victory party in Brooklyn. quoted by William Neuman of The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/nyregion/mayor-de-blasio-primary-win.html.

Lynn Margulis photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“Every step I take in light is mine forever.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Theo van Doesburg photo

“You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.”

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) American psychologist

As quoted in How the Best Leaders Lead : Proven Secrets to Getting the Most Out of Yourself and Others (2010) by Brian Tracy, p. 35.
1970s and later

Miklós Horthy photo
Mohammad Khatami photo

“What I propose is that dialogue should take place among cultures and civilizations. And as a first step, I would suggest that cultures and civilizations should not be represented by politicians but by philosophers, scientists, artists and intellectuals. […] Dialogue will lead to a common language and a common language will culminate in a common thought, and this will turn into a common approach to the world and global events.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

March 24, 2009 , Lecture in The Australian National University DIALOGUE, JUSTICE AND PEACE Source http://cais.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/bulletins/CAIS%20Bulletin%20Vol%2016%20No%201%20sm.pdf

David Berg photo
Thomas Little Heath photo
Bill McKibben photo
Clement of Alexandria photo
Tad Williams photo
Woody Guthrie photo
Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“David Brody: Radical Islam: to Evangelicals, this is a bread and butter issue. You said there's a Muslim problem in this country. What do you mean by that exactly?
Donald Trump: Bill O'Reilly asked me is there a Muslim problem? And I said absolutely, yes. In fact I went a step further. I said I didn't see Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center. It was very interesting. I thought that was going to be a controversial statement and somebody, I think it was Dennis Miller introduced me, he was doing like an analysis of me, he said, I love it. The guy said what the truth is. He didn't mince his words. He didn't say, 'Oh, gee, no there's not a Muslim problem, everybody's wonderful.' And by the way, many, many, most Muslims are wonderful people, but is there a Muslim problem? Look what's happening. Look what happened right here in my city with the World Trade Center and lots of other places. So I said it and I thought it was going to be very controversial but actually it was very well received. I think people want the truth. I think they're tired of politicians. They're tired of politically correct stuff. I mean I could have said, 'Oh absolutely not Bill, there's no Muslim problem, everything is wonderful, just forget about the World Trade Center.' But you have to speak the truth. We're so politically correct that this country is falling apart.
Brody: With some evangelicals there are some problems with the teachings of the Koran. Do you have concerns about the Koran?
Trump: Well, I'll tell you what. The Koran is very interesting. A lot of people say it teaches love and there is a very big group of people who really understand the Koran far better than I do. I'm certainly not an expert, to put it mildly. But there's something there that teaches some very negative vibe. I mean things are happening, when you look at people blowing up all over the streets that are in some of the countries over in the Middle East, just blowing up a super market with not even soldiers, just people, when 250 people die in a super market that are shopping, where people die in a store or in a street. There's a lot of hatred there that's some place. Now I don't know if that's from the Koran. I don't know if that's from some place else. But there's tremendous hatred out there that I've never seen anything like it. So, you have two views. You have the view that the Koran is all about love and then you have the view that the Koran is, that there's a lot of hate in the Koran.”

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

On CBN News' "The Brody File" (12 April 2011) ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWzDAvemJG8) ( transcript http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2011/04/12/brody-file-exclusive-donald-trump-says-something-in-koran-teaches.aspx)
2010s, 2011

Alan Bean photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Aron Ra photo
Sue Monk Kidd photo
Chris Jericho photo

“Yeah, congratulations. Way to go, Punk, way to go. Congratulations on your big win. You need to enjoy them while you can. You see, you can smirk if you want to, but I see straight through you. When I look at you, I see a fraud. And I'm not talking about the fact that you call yourself the best in the world, I'm talking about you as a person. Because I did a little research this week, Punk, and I found something, a little deep, dirty, dark secret about you. You've been straight edge ever since you came to the WWE, but you've never explained the reasons why. I wanna tell all of these wannabes why you're straight edge. I wanna tell them that you're straight edge because your father is an alcoholic.
Yeah, that's right. Your father was an alcoholic who let you down every step of the way when you were growing up, and it terrifies you. You don't want to end up like him. But it's inevitable that you will, because alcohol is in your blood, it's in your genes, it's part of who you are, and that tortures you. I know you've built this facade, this wall that you're a sarcastic antihero with not a care in the world, but I think I've found something that you care about. I've found something that gives you nightmares, something that terrifies you.
And isn't it ironic that the very alcohol that you crave is the same thing that ruined your childhood? Oh, the nightmares you must have about your father; I almost feel bad for you, Punk. Is that the reason why you have all those tattoos? Was the pain of wanting to drink so bad that you needed the pain of a tattoo needle to take it out of your mind? Was that your only solace?
It doesn't matter if it is, Punk, because you are going to drink eventually, and I'm the one who is going to make you drink. At WrestleMania XXVIII, I'm going to take away your title, I'm gonna take away your claims of being the best in the world, I'm gonna take away your bravado, and I'm gonna leave you a broken man. You're gonna hit bottom, Punk, and when you do, you're going to embrace your destiny, and you're gonna take a drink. And it's gonna taste so good that you're gonna wanna take another one, and another one, and another one. After April 1st, I'm gonna be recognized for who I am—the undisputed best in the world and the new WWE Champion. And you're gonna be recognized for who you are, who your father was—a pathetic damn drunk!”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

March 12, 2012 - WWE Raw

Stanley Baldwin photo
Wendell Phillips photo

“Be not dismayed by a defeat. What is defeat! Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.”

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

No record of this specific remark exists prior to its use by a George W. Phillips, in an address to the fifth annual convention of the National Association of Life Underwriters (June 1894), reported in The Chronicle: A Weekly Journal, Devoted to the Interests of Insurance Vol. LIII (1894), p. 336 https://books.google.com/books?id=xoAoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA335&dq=%22What+is+defeat?+Nothing+but+education.+Nothing+but+the+first+step+to+something+better.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFiMan5KveAhWl6YMKHYV6C44Q6AEIdTAO#v=onepage&q=%22What%20is%20defeat%3F%20Nothing%20but%20education.%20Nothing%20but%20the%20first%20step%20to%20something%20better.%22&f=false
Misattributed

Hugo Diemer photo

“Follett was always preoccupied with the dynamic view of organization, with the thing in process, so to speak. Authority, Power, Leadership, the Giving of Orders, Conflict, Conciliation — all her keywords are active words. There is a static or structural approach to the problem of organization which has its value; but those who are most convinced of the importance of such structural analysis would be the first to admit that it is only a step on the journey, an instrument of thought; it is not and cannot be complete in itself; it is only the anatomy of the subject. As in medicine, the study of anatomy may be an essential discipline, but it is in the physiology and psychology of the individual patient that that discipline finds its working justification.
Thus the four principles which she finally arrived at to express her view of organization were all active principles. In her own words, they are:
"1. Co-ordination by direct contact of the responsible people concerned.
2. Co-ordination in the early stages.
3. Co-ordination as a reciprocal relating of all the features in a situation.
4. Co-ordination as a continuing process."”

Henry C. Metcalf (1867–1942) American business theorist

Since these principles are carefully explained and illustrated by Miss Follett herself in the final paper in this volume, we must content ourselves here with merely this concise statement of them.
Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxvi

Sandra Day O'Connor photo
Aurangzeb photo

“27 January 1670: During this month of Ramzan abounding in miracles, the Emperor as the promoter of justice and overthrower of mischief, as a knower of truth and destroyer of oppression, as the zephyr of the garden of victory and the reviver of the faith of the Prophet, issued orders for the demolition of the temple situated in Mathura, famous as the Dehra of Kesho Rai. In a short time by the great exertions of his officers, the destruction of this strong foundation of infidelity was accomplished, and on its site a lofty mosque was built at the expenditure of a large sum. This temple of folly was built by that gross idiot Birsingh Deo Bundela. Before his accession to the throne, the Emperor Jahangir was displeased with Shaikh Abul Fazl. This infidel [Birsingh] became a royal favourite by slaying him [Abul Fazl], and after Jahangir’s accession was rewarded for this service with the permission to build the temple, which he did at an expense of thirty-three lakhs of rupees.
Praised be the august God of the faith of Islam, that in the auspicious reign of this destroyer of infidelity and turbulence [Aurangzeb], such a wonderful and seemingly impossible work was successfully accomplished. On seeing this instance of the strength of the Emperor’s faith and the grandeur of his devotion to God, the proud Rajas were stifled, and in amazement they stood like facing the wall. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels, which had been set up in the temple, were brought to Agra, and buried under the steps of the mosque of the Begam Sahib, in order to be continually trodden upon. The name of Mathura was changed to Islamabad.
17 December 1679: Hafiz Muhammad Amin Khan reported that some of his servants had ascended the hill and found the other side of the pass also deserted; (evidently) the Rana had evacuated Udaipur and fled. On the 4th January/12th Zil. H., the Emperor encamped in the pass. Hasan ‘Ali Khan was sent in pursuit of the infidel. Prince Muhammad ‘Azam and Khan Jahan Bahadur were permitted to view Udaipur. Ruhullah Khan and Ekkataz Khan went to demolish the great temple in front of the Rana’s palace, which was one of the rarest buildings of the age and the chief cause of the destruction of life and property of the despised worshippers. Twenty machator Rajputs [who] were sitting in the temple, vowed to give up their lives; first one of them came out to fight, killed some and was then himself slain, then came out another and so on, until every one of the twenty perished, after killing a large number of the imperialists including the trusted slave, Ikhlas. The temple was found empty. The hewers broke the images.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Saqi Mustad Khan, Maasir-i-Alamgiri, translated and annotated by Jadunath Sarkar, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, 1947, reprinted by Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, Delhi, 1986. quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. Different translation: January, 1670. “In this month of Ramzan, the religious-minded Emperor ordered the demolition of the temple at Mathura known as the Dehra of Keshav Rai. His officers accomplished it in a short time. A grand mosque was built on its site at a vast expenditure. The temple had been built by Bir Singh Dev Bundela, at a cost of 33 lakhs of Rupees. Praised be the God of the great faith of Islam that in the auspicious reign- of this destroyer of infidelity and turbulence, such a marvellous and [seemingly] impossible feat was accomplished. On seeing this [instance of the] strength of the Emperor’s faith and the grandeur of his devotion to God, the Rajahs felt suffocated and they stood in amazement like statues facing the walls. The idols, large and small, set with costly jewels, which had been set up in the temple, were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of the mosque of Jahanara, to be trodden upon continually.”
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s

Zail Singh photo
Clifford D. Simak photo

““You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Weber.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.””

Source: City (1952), Chapter 1, “City” (pp. 34-35)

Stafford Cripps photo
Alexander Bogdanov photo

“In the struggle of mankind with the elements, its aim is dominion over nature. Dominion is a relationship of the organizer to the organized. Step by step, mankind acquires control over and conquers nature; this means that step by step it organizes the universe; it organizes the universe for Itself and in its own interests. Such is the meaning and content of the age-long labour of mankind.
Nature resists elementally and blindly with the terrible strength of its dark, chaotic, but innumerable and Infinite army of elements. In order to conquer it, mankind must organize itself into a mighty army. Unconsciously, it has been doing this for centuries by forming working collective, ranging from the small primitive communes of the primordial epoch to the contemporary cooperation of hundreds of millions of people.
If mankind had to organize the universe only with the forces and means given to it by nature, it would not have any advantage over the other living creatures which also fight for survival against the rest of nature. In its labour mankind uses tools, which it takes from the same external nature. This forms the basis of its victories; it is this which long ago provided and continues to provide mankind with a growing superiority over the strongest and most terrible giants of elemental life and which distinguishes it from the rest of nature's kingdom.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. 1-2.

Theo de Raadt photo

“It's terrible, everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.”

Theo de Raadt (1968) systems software engineer

Quoted in [Is Linux For Losers?, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/intelligentinfrastructure/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo.html, Lyons, Daniel, 2005-06-16, 2007-01-10]
on the quality of the code of the Linux kernel

Florence Nightingale photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Lydia Maria Child photo
Radhanath Swami photo
Dave Sim photo

“If something knocks you five degrees out of whack, the journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step ends up thousands of miles away from its intended destination.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

http://cerebusfangirl.com/artists/0805talk.php

Rajiv Malhotra photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Dag Hammarskjöld photo
Al Gore photo
Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“Man's conception of what is most worth knowing and reflecting upon, of what may best compel his scholarly energies, has changed greatly with the years. His earliest impressions were of his own insignificance and of the stupendous powers and forces by which he was surrounded and ruled. The heavenly fires, the storm-cloud and the thunderbolt, the rush of waters and the change of seasons, all filled him with an awe which straightway saw in them manifestations of the superhuman and the divine. Man was absorbed in nature, a mythical and legendary nature to be sure, but still the nature out of which science was one day to arise. Then, at the call of Socrates, he turned his back on nature and sought to know himself; to learn the secrets of those mysterious and hidden processes by which he felt and thought and acted. The intellectual centre of gravity had passed from nature to man. From that day to this the goal of scholarship has been the understanding of both nature and man, the uniting of them in one scheme or plan of knowledge, and the explaining of them as the offspring of the omnipotent activity of a Creative Spirit, the Christian God. Slow and painful have been the steps toward the goal which to St. Augustine seemed so near at hand, but which has receded through the intervening centuries as the problems grew more complex and as the processes of inquiry became so refined that whole worlds of new and unsuspected facts revealed themselves. Scholars divided into two camps. The one would have ultimate and complete explanations at any cost; the other, overcome by the greatness of the undertaking, held that no explanation in a large or general way was possible. The one camp bred sciolism; the other narrow and helpless specialization.
At this point the modern university problem took its rise; and for over four hundred years the university has been striving to adjust its organization so that it may most effectively bend its energies to the solution of the problem as it is. For this purpose the university's scholars have unconsciously divided themselves into three types or classes: those who investigate and break new ground; those who explain, apply, and make understandable the fruits of new investigation; and those philosophically minded teachers who relate the new to the old, and, without dogma or intolerance, point to the lessons taught by the developing human spirit from its first blind gropings toward the light on the uplands of Asia or by the shores of the Mediterranean, through the insights of the world's great poets, artists, scientists, philosophers, statesmen, and priests, to its highly organized institutional and intellectual life of to-day. The purpose of scholarly activity requires for its accomplishment men of each of these three types. They are allies, not enemies; and happy the age, the people, or the university in which all three are well represented. It is for this reason that the university which does not strive to widen the boundaries of human knowledge, to tell the story of the new in terms that those familiar with the old can understand, and to put before its students a philosophical interpretation of historic civilization, is, I think, falling short of the demands which both society and university ideals themselves may fairly make.
A group of distinguished scholars in separate and narrow fields can no more constitute a university than a bundle of admirably developed nerves, without a brain and spinal cord, can produce all the activities of the human organism.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Scholarship and service : the policies of a national university in a modern democracy https://archive.org/details/scholarshipservi00butluoft (1921)

Ken Ham photo
Big Daddy Kane photo
John J. Pershing photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Shahrukh Khan photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo

“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes…”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 184

Benjamin N. Cardozo photo
John Donne photo
Vitruvius photo
Kurien Kunnumpuram photo

“The Church in India needs to take more seriously the option for the poor and take concrete steps to alleviate poverty and misery in India.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2007) World Peace: An Impossible Dream? , Mumbai: St Pauls
On Peace

Lech Wałęsa photo

“Freedom must be gained step by step, slowly. Freedom is a food which must be carefully administered when people are too hungry for it.”

Lech Wałęsa (1943) Polish politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former President of Poland

Interview http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19810316&id=mjkyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vaQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=866,2677867&q=%22Freedom+must+be+gained+step+by+step+slowly+Freedom+is+a+food+which+must+be+carefully+administered+when+people+are+too+hungry+for+it%22 with Oriana Fallaci (22 & 23 February 1981)

Norman Vincent Peale photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Henri Matisse photo
Michael Mullen photo
Khloé Kardashian photo
Rickard Falkvinge photo
Nigel Lawson photo
Dashiell Hammett photo
Victor Davis Hanson photo

“It is time to step back from the apartheid brink…”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, Diversity: History's Pathway to Chaos (2016)

Pappus of Alexandria photo
Frank Sinatra photo
Wang Yu-chi photo

“Today's meeting with (Macau) Chief Executive (Fernando) Chui was a positive step. Because Taiwan has very close ties with Macau, it can be a good model for relations between Taiwan and Hong Kong or across the Taiwan Strait.”

Wang Yu-chi (1969) Taiwanese politician

Wang Yu-chi (2013) cited in " MAC head meets with Macau's top official in first trip since taking office http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/intl-community/2013/08/28/387526/MAC-head.htm" on The China Post, 28 August 2013

Leo Tolstoy photo

“This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and specially Rousseau.

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and brutalization (not forgetting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary success of Nietzsche´s works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this.

Some disjointed writings, striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

Melanie Joy photo
Lavrentiy Beria photo
John Dryden photo

“Men met each other with erected look,
The steps were higher that they took;
Friends to congratulate their friends made haste,
And long inveterate foes saluted as they passed.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Threnodia Augustalis (1685), line 124-127.

Jordan Peterson photo

“You plunge into that underworld space, and that's also where you begin to nurse feelings of resentment and aggrievement and murder and homicide, and even worse. If people are betrayed enough, they become obsessed with the futility of being itself, and they go to places where perhaps no one would ever want to go if they were in their right mind. And they begin to nurse fantasies of the ultimate revenge, and that's a horrible place to be. And that's hell. That's why hell has always been a suburb of the underworld, because if you get plunged into a situation that you don't understand, and things are not good for you anymore, it's only one step from being completely confused, to being completely outraged and resentful, and then it's only one step from there to really looking for revenge. And that can take you places – well, that merely to imagine properly can be traumatic. And I've seen that with people many times. And I think that anybody who uses their imagination on themselves can see how that happens, because I can't imagine that there isn't a single person in the room who hasn't nursed fairly intense fantasies of revenge, at least at one point in their life – and usually for what appear to be good reasons. It can shake your faith in being to be betrayed, but if it shakes it so badly that you turn against being itself, that's certainly no solution. All it does is make everything that's bad, even worse.”

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

Other

George Santayana photo
Oliver Sacks photo
David Wood photo

“Language steps in where the angels of experience fear to tread.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 1, The Faces of Silence, p. 5

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Anita Sarkeesian photo
Janusz Korwin-Mikke photo
Akio Morita photo
Richard Strauss photo

“And now we step to the rhythm of miracles.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(The Light, That Never Dies, p. 122).
Book Sources, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008)

Margaret Mead photo