Quotes about stick
page 7

“Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint. The brushes I use are more a sticks rather than brushes – the brush doesn't touch the surface on the canvas, it's just above.... [so] I am able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, p. 144

Freedom, Painting

“Courts are apt to err by sticking too closely to the words of a law where those words import a policy that goes beyond them.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 469 (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
1920s

Law

“Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick.”

Bob Black book The Abolition of Work

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: I am not playing definitional games with anybody. When I say I want to abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimun definition of work is forced labor, that is, compulsory production. Both elements are essential. Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick. (The carrot is just the stick by other means.) But not all creation is work. Work is never done for its own sake, it's done on account of some product or output that the worker (or, more often, somebody else) gets out of it. This is what work necessarily is. To define it is to despise it. But work is usually even worse than its definition decrees. The dynamic of domination intrinsic to work tends over time toward elaboration. In advanced work-riddled societies, including all industrial societies whether capitalist or "communist," work invariably acquires other attributes which accentuate its obnoxiousness.
Usually—and this is even more true in "communist" than capitalist countries, where the state is almost the only employer and everyone is an employee — work is employment, i. e., wage-labor, which means selling yourself on the installment plan. Thus 95% of Americans who work, work for somebody (or something) else. In the USSR or Cuba or Yugoslavia or Nicaragua or any other alternative model which might be adduced, the corresponding figure approaches 100%. Only the embattled Third World peasant bastions — Mexico, India, Brazil, Turkey — temporarily shelter significant concentrations of agriculturists who perpetuate the traditional arrangement of most laborers in the last several millennia, the payment of taxes (ransom) to the state or rent to parasitic landlords in return for being otherwise left alone. Even this raw deal is beginning to look good. All industrial (and office) workers are employees and under the sort of surveillance which ensures servility.

“And it always seems to stick in one's mind more than reality does.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

As quoted in "Terry Gilliam reflects to Dreams about the making of Dr Parnassus" by Phil Stubbs http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/parntgrf.htm Context: We read Dover Books, because you can steal from them. The medieval imagery and iconography is so good for the imagination. Trying to describe the world, trying to describe the cosmos, trying to put it down in neat orderly fashion, unlike reality. And it always seems to stick in one's mind more than reality does.

Reality

“Personally, I stick to my idea that we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Letter from Peking (Summer 1940), quoted in The Last European War : September 1939/December 1941 (1976) by John Lukacs, p. 515
Context: Personally, I stick to my idea that we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World. The scandal for you, is that England and France should have come to this tragedy because they have sincerely tried the road of peace. But did they not precisely make a mistake on the true meaning of "peace"? Peace cannot mean anything but a HIGHER PROCESS OF CONQUEST. … The world is bound to belong to its most active elements. … Just now, the Germans deserve to win because, however bad or mixed is their spirit, they have more spirit than the rest of the world. It is easy to criticize and despise the fifth column. But no spiritual aims or energy will ever succeed, or even deserve to succeed, unless it is able to spread and keep spreading a fifth column.

Death, World, Idea, Birth

“Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.”

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

The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program Oral History Interview http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/sj1.html, Advice for Future Entrepreneurs (20 April 1995) 1990s Context: I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don't blame them. Its really tough and it consumes your life. If you've got a family and you're in the early days of a company, I can't imagine how one could do it. I'm sure its been done but its rough. Its pretty much an eighteen hour day job, seven days a week for awhile. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.

Idea, Problem, Thinking, Passion

“No, this is how it works —
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again.”

Regina Spektor (1980) American singer-songwriter and pianist

"On the Radio"
Begin to Hope (2006)

Love, Hope, Heart

“Iran and Iraq have been at war for five years now. The traditional present for a fifth anniversary is wood. Here's a gift suggestion: a big stick to beat some goddamned sense into their heads.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

"Year in Review" in Rolling Stone (19 December 1985)

War, Sense

“So we will stick to our word, which means a change of the basis of society; it may frighten people, but it will at least warn them that there is something to be frightened about, which will be no less dangerous for being ignored; and also it may encourage some people, and will mean to them at least not a fear, but a hope.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Signs of Change (1888), How We Live And How We Might Live
Context: The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people mean by their word reform, I can't help thinking that it would be a mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal beneath its harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change of the basis of society; it may frighten people, but it will at least warn them that there is something to be frightened about, which will be no less dangerous for being ignored; and also it may encourage some people, and will mean to them at least not a fear, but a hope.

People, Fear, Hope, Change

“It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)
Context: We've come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England — or the Queen — and have the real business of the presidency conducted by... a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

People, Star

“Jack held the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth. He stood back and the head hung there, a little blood dribbling down the stick."
Instinctively the boys drew back too; and the forest was very still. They listened, and the loudest noise was the buzzing of the flies over the spilled guts."”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 8: Gift for the Darkness
Context: He paused and stood up, looking at the shadows under the trees. His voice was lower when he spoke again.
"But we'll leave part of the kill for …"
He knelt down again and was busy with his knife. The boys crowded round him. He spoke over his shoulder to Roger.
"Sharpen a stick at both ends."
Presently he stood up, holding the dripping sow's head in his hands.
"Where's that stick?"
"Here."
"Ram one end in the earth. Oh — it's rock. Jam it in that crack. There."
Jack held the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth. He stood back and the head hung there, a little blood dribbling down the stick."
Instinctively the boys drew back too; and the forest was very still. They listened, and the loudest noise was the buzzing of the flies over the spilled guts."

Boy

“They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspect they differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.

“Distrust all generalizations: stick to the concrete.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

As quoted in “Don Pañong – Genius" by A.V.H. Hartendorp in Philippine Magazine (September 1929), p. 211.
ULOL
Context: (... philosophy is more often the systematization of the prejudices of philosophers than the systematization of nature.) Distrust all generalizations: stick to the concrete.

“A boy named Buddy came up beside me in the schoolyard. I don't remember what passed as prologue, but I do not forget what Buddy divulged to me: If you're white, you're all right; If you're brown, stick around; If you're black, stand back.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)
Context: A boy named Buddy came up beside me in the schoolyard. I don't remember what passed as prologue, but I do not forget what Buddy divulged to me: If you're white, you're all right; If you're brown, stick around; If you're black, stand back.
It was as though Buddy had taken me to a mountaintop and shown me the way things lay in the city below.

Boy, Forgetting

“When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are
Context: The oldest answers to the most basic questions about how to operate are common to virtually every culture on the planet, because at the simplest level, every culture needs to keep order -- especially this kind: (James Burke displays a wedding ring.) This is one of those things in life we protect most against being changed when knowledge changes us. We protect it by turning it into a ritual. When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is. The people doing it are effectively saying, "No matter what else may change, we won't rock the boat! We're not maverick. You can trust us." Expressions of approval follow. Most of these ritual ways of answering a social need that we got from the past look like it. They include something from an ancient rite -- in this case, the old symbol of fertility: the ring. And then, it's all done in the presence of a supernatural being: a God. So, the agreement is also made under what was once a real threat of heavenly retribution if you broke your promise later on. Some things, this ritual says, must be permanent.

“The man who was executed for gathering sticks”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

New Fragments (1892)
Context: The Sabbath being regarded as a shadow or type of that heavenly repose which the righteous will enjoy when this world has passed away, 'so these six days of creation are so many periods or millenniums for which the world and the toils and labours of our present state are destined to endure.' The Mosaic account was thus reduced to a poetic myth... But if this symbolic interpretation, which is now generally accepted, be the true one, what becomes of the Sabbath day? It is absolutely without ecclesiastical meaning. The man who was executed for gathering sticks on that day must therefore be regarded as the victim of a rude legal rendering of a religious epic.<!--pp. 30-31

“They call us bandits, yet every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are being held up. And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a gun into our ribs.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)
Context: we who rip off billions of dollars every year through tax evasions, illegal price fixing, embezzlement, consumer fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and swindles. They call us bandits, yet every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are being held up. And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a gun into our ribs.

People, Time

“Most work serves the predatory purposes of commerce and coercion and can be abolished outright. The rest can be automated away and/or transformed — by the experts, the workers who do it — into creative, playlike pastimes whose variety and conviviality will make extrinsic inducements like the capitalist carrot and the Communist stick equally obsolete.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

The Libertarian as Conservative (1984)
Context: Most work serves the predatory purposes of commerce and coercion and can be abolished outright. The rest can be automated away and/or transformed — by the experts, the workers who do it — into creative, playlike pastimes whose variety and conviviality will make extrinsic inducements like the capitalist carrot and the Communist stick equally obsolete. In the hopefully impending meta-industrial revolution, libertarian communists revolting against work will settle accounts with “libertarians” and “Communists” working against revolt. And then we can go for the gusto!

“A vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: p> If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghostOr Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolnessA vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.</p

Parting

“The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge piñata — a papier-mâché donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budget and other goodies. The American voter is blindfolded and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some sense into the silly bastard.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Parliament of Whores (1991)

Sense, Christmas, Housing

“There seems to be much misunderstanding about True Will … The fact of a person being a gentleman is as much an ineluctable factor as any possible spiritual experience; in fact, it is possible, even probable, that a man may be misled by the enthusiasm of an illumination, and if he should find apparent conflict between his spiritual duty and his duty to honour, it is almost sure evidence that a trap is being laid for him and he should unhesitatingly stick to the course which ordinary decency indicates”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley : Tunisia 1923 (1996), edited by Stephen Skinner p. 21.
Context: There seems to be much misunderstanding about True Will … The fact of a person being a gentleman is as much an ineluctable factor as any possible spiritual experience; in fact, it is possible, even probable, that a man may be misled by the enthusiasm of an illumination, and if he should find apparent conflict between his spiritual duty and his duty to honour, it is almost sure evidence that a trap is being laid for him and he should unhesitatingly stick to the course which ordinary decency indicates … I wish to say definitely, once and for all, that people who do not understand and accept this position have utterly failed to grasp the fundamental principles of the Law of Thelema.

Personality

“Strange," mused the Director, as they turned away, "strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

People, Imagination, Game, Thinking

“Women have the 'basket of maybes' on their arm, men just have the 'stick of now'.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Women, Men

“You have to believe in marriage and you have to believe in a relationship between two people. If you really think in your life that you have found the right person, you have to stick to it, even though there are ups and downs. If you really believe in your union, you have to nourish it and work for it, then you can really spend your life together forever.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

Life, Marriage, People, Thinking

“At the same time that I think discretion the most useful talent a man can be master of, I look upon cunning to be the accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them: cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon: cunning is a kind of short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance. Discretion the more it is discovered, gives a greater authority to the person who possesses it: cunning, when it is once detected, loses its force, and makes a man incapable of bringing about even those events which he might have done had he passed only for a plain man. Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life: cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interest and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understandings, cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Life, Men, Making love, Understanding

“Some in the Labour Party want to blame our defeat only on the leadership. Others want to blame it only on Brexit . Yet it was about both of those things and more. In our towns in Yorkshire, we knocked on thousands of doors trying to persuade people to stick with Labour. Some said they just didn’t want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister. Others were fearful that we wouldn’t stand up for national security. Some wanted Brexit done and felt angry and let down. We found little enthusiasm for Boris Johnson. One woman told me in tears that she was voting Tory for the first time and she was furious with us for making her feel like she had to do it.”

Yvette Cooper (1969) British politician

From an article in the Daily Mirror in responce to the poor result from Labour in the 2019 General Election - Yvette Cooper: Labour did badly in the election but will pull UK together https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/yvette-cooper-labour-badly-election-21178805 December 2019

People, Fear, Making love, Feeling

“Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic ideas", p. 26
The Denial of Death (1973)

Food, Way, Star, Nature

“Being asked if I will run again for CPC leadership. Zero chance. The party is morally and intellectually corrupt. Scheer was a weak leader who pushed it to the centre. The next leader will do the same. I started a principled conservative alternative. I’m sticking to it.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

Dec 12 https://twitter.com/MaximeBernier/status/1205210988628398081 2019

Chance

“The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.
"The Creation Myths of Cooperstown", p. 46
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Men, History, Sport

“When I started to make translations I was just doing it intuitively, and my tendency was to stick to the original as much as possible. Then I gained more confidence in my own poetry and my own writing and I began to become less concerned about being strictly faithful to the original and more concerned with producing a good poem in English. What I have often found—especially in the translations that are done by scholars—is that they’re very faithful to the content of the original language, but in English they don’t really sound that good as poems.”

Francisco Aragón (1968) poet

On translating Spanish poetry into English in “Interview with Francisco Aragón: Latino Poetry From All Its Perspectives” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/2010/09/16/interview-with-francisco-aragon-latino-poetry-from-all-its-perspectives/ in Sampsonia Way (2010 Sept 16)

Making love, Faith, Confidence, Self-confidence

“It looks like he has some invisible magnet stuck to his hockey stick so that the ball does not leave it at all.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

View of a journalist
Dhyan Chand (a biographical sketch)

Hockey

“I’ve seen trends ebb and flow. I’ve seen progress and I’ve seen regression, not just in gay movements, but in all types of movements — whether it’s gender or sexuality or race. All kinds of different movements. And humans are fickle. Humans are very trendy. And they’re posers. If some economic change happens, it can all go to shit, honestly. And I’ve seen it happen in my lifetime. So do I trust that this is what it is and it’ll stick forever? I’m skeptical and I’m cautious.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Doug Rule in RuPaul: Ultimate Queen http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/04/ultimate-queen-rupaul/ (2016)

Change

“The stick-on holograms had actually had some effect on Bobby, because religion was now something he felt he’d considered and put aside. Basically, the way he figured it, there were just some people around who needed that shit, and he guessed there always had been, but he wasn’t one of them, so he didn’t.”

William Gibson book Count Zero

Source: Count Zero (1986), Ch. 6

People, Religion, Way

“Tikka Khan was a soldier doing a soldier’s job. He went to East Pakistan with precise orders and came back by precise orders. He did what he was ordered to do, though he wasn’t always in agree ment, and I picked him because I know he’ll follow my orders with the same discipline. And he won’t try to stick his nose in politics. I can’t destroy the whole army, and anyway his bad reputation for the events in Dacca is exaggerated. There’s only one man really responsible for those events—Yahya Khan. Both he and his advisers were so drunk with power and corruption they’d even forgotten the honor of the army. They thought of nothing but acquiring beautiful cars, building beautiful homes, making friends with bankers, and sending money abroad. Yahya Khan wasn’t interested in the government of the country, he was interested in power for its own sake and nothing else. What can you say of a leader who starts drinking as soon as he wakes up and doesn’t stop until he goes to bed? You’ve no idea how painful it was to deal with him. He was really Jack the Ripper.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Money, Pain, Bad luck, Making love

“Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic ideas", p. 26
The Denial of Death (1973)

Nature

“Stick to the narrations and the way of the salaf(pious predecessors) and beware of newly invented matters for all of it is innovation.”

Abu Hanifa (699–767) Founder of Hanafi school of thought

Jalal al-Din Sututi, Sawn ul- Muntaq p: 32

Way

“An academic debate on any subject should concentrate on the pros and cons of the arguments presented by the two (or more) opposing sides in the debate; it should be conducted in an open and sincere atmosphere; and the natural desire (not academically wrong in itself) to win the debate should not be allowed to overpower the academic desire to arrive at the truth… And an academic debate cannot be won by the simple expedient of name-calling and label-sticking, and consequent disqualification of the opposing side from even taking part in the debate.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 9 : Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic Scholarship

Truth, Nature, Parting, Sincerity

“Sergent’s last thrust represents the unkindest cut in this whole smear campaign. It is not we who have avoided debate. It is these Western scholars who have chosen to conduct a spit-and-run campaign from a safe distance, while restricting their criticism of our theory (elaborated by us in our earlier book) to name-calling and label-sticking rather than to demolition of our arguments.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 9 : Michael Witzel - An Examination of Western Vedic Scholarship

Books

“Going around the world on a bicycle is no longer enough -- the daredevil has got to go around the moon on a Pogo stick with one arm tied behind him if he wants to get his picture in the paper.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Madness in the Family (1988)

World

“After sticking up the picture I took five minutes to watch what happened next. A sea of people walked up, stared and left looking confused and slightly cheated. I felt like a true modern artist.”

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

Wall and Piece (2007)

People, Cheating, Sea

“If the opposing of one cock to fight with another may be justly esteemed a national barbarism, what shall be said of a custom more inhuman, which authorised the throwing at them with sticks, and ferociously putting them to a painful and lingering death? I know not at what time this unfortunate animal became the object of such wicked and wanton abuse: the sport, if such a denomination may be given to it, is certainly no recent invention, and perhaps is alluded to by Chaucer…If the poor bird by chance had its legs broken, or was otherwise so lamed as not to be able to stand, the barbarous owners were wont to support it with sticks, in order to prolong the pleasure received from the reiteration of its torment.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 283
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Death, Pain, Pleasure, Support

“Bracquemond tells me that he looked attentively at my works at our exhibition. Far from objecting to them, as I expected, he said they were compactly drawn, and modeled, but he is shocked by the dots; he enjoined me to stick to divisionism but not to use the dot.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

I said nothing to him of our experiments. He told me that of all the impressionist painters he liked my work best; this was not the first time he had said this; to each one his own taste. He does completely accept my view that the old disorderly method of execution has become impossible.
Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter, Eragny, 23 January 1887, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 97
1880's

“Harvey was not especially introspective, but this didn’t mean he was stupid. He was moral, within his lights; he understood the value of subtlety even if he wasn’t much for it himself, and one of the reasons he could get away with being loud and obnoxious was that he was a fair stick at strategy and logistics. Give him a job and he’d do it, usually in the most entropy-producing way possible, yes, but also in a way that achieved exactly the aim it was supposed to. One of Harvey’s guiding lights in terms of strategies was simplicity; all things being equal, Harvey preferred the course of action that let him get into the middle of things and then just buckle down. When asked about it, Harvey called it his Occam’s razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone’s ass was usually the correct one.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 14 (p. 315)

Stupidity, Way, Light

“United always had many amazing players, but whenever we faced them we were always, always, always scared of what Paul Scholes could do. Ask anyone from that old Arsenal team, they will tell you the same. If you let him play, he can kill you, and for me he was so underrated. The way he plays: one touch, arriving late into the box, the way he strikes the ball, his vision, his passing. Incredible. I know people used to give him some stick for his tackling, but I liked that. He put his foot in, showed some character, had a go, but I liked that about him too. For me he is one of the best midfielders I have ever seen.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/henry-i-was-scared-of-incredible-scholes
Thierry Henry

People, Way, Box

“I have about half a second to make a crucial decision: I can either sprint and hope I make it there before I shit in my boxers, or I can stick my thumb up into my ass and shuffle the 60 yards to lavatory freedom.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

The Austin Road Trip http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/the_austin_road_trip.phtml#281, The Tucker Max Stories

Making love, Hope, Decision, Freedom

“It just always reveals to me how many misconceptions and what a misunderstanding there is about what feminism is. Feminism is about demonizing. Feminism is a stick with which to beat other women with. It’s about oppression, it’s about hatred, it’s about harming men. I really don’t know what my tits have to do with it. It’s very confusing.”

Emma Watson (1990) British actress and model

"Actress Emma Watson says revealing photo does not undermine feminism" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-emmawatson-idUSKBN16C0QV, Reuters, in response to critics of her photos in Vogue magazine (March 5, 2017)

Women, Men

“Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable… But when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object—a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal—and become an infinitely long string. Any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. Within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or World War II. The only thing the glue wouldn’t stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other, never drying. The upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. Happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn’t give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else.”

Bill Bryson The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 81

War, World, Making love, Way

“The makers of sneakers also thoughtfully pocked the soles with numberless crevices, craters, chevrons, mazes, crop circles, and other rubbery hieroglyphs, so that when you stepped in a moist pile of dog shit, as you most assuredly did within three bounds of leaving the house, they provided additional absorbing hours of pastime while you cleaned them out with a stick, gagging quietly but oddly content.”

Bill Bryson The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 34

Dogs, Housing

“We Anglophones tend to use the words nation and state more or less interchangeably, but when one nation is divided into two states, it’s important to stick to the Koreans’ own practice of distinguishing clearly between nationalism (minjokjuŭi) and patriotism / state spirit (aeguksim, kukka chŏngsin, kukkajuŭi, etc). Historians do this even in English when discussing the Weimar Republic, where nationalism undermined support for the state — and for liberal democracy — just as it does in South Korea today.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Democracy, Support

“What I want to know is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few words as you can just what it's all about. -- You hit a ball with a stick until it falls into a hole.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

"The Heel of Achilles"
The Clicking Of Cuthbert (1922)

“Immigration is where Trump’s journey begins and ends: the message running all the way through this stick of rock.”

Richard Wolffe (1968) American journalist

Let's drop the euphemisms: Donald Trump is a racist president (2018)

Way

“Not only boxing, but wrestling, quarter-staff, single-stick, bull-baiting, every exercise of the common people, that supposes the possible risk of life or limb, and, of course, that tends to prepare them for deeds of bravery of a higher order, and, by the means of those deeds and of the character and consequence naturally growing out of them, to preserve the independence and the liberties of their country; every such exercise seems to be doomed to extirpation. ... Every thing calculated to keep alive the admiration, and even the idea, of hardihood, seems to have become offensive and odious in the sight of but too many of those, whose duty it is to endeavour to arrest, and not to accelerate, the fatal progress of effeminacy. ... That cuttings and stabbings are more fatal than boxing, to say nothing of the disgrace, every one must agree; and, it cannot be denied, that the former have increased in proportion as the latter has been driven from amongst the people.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Boxing’, Political Register (10 August 1805), p. 200
1800s

Life, People, Exercises, Idea

“It is ugly in this world, and when the killing starts, the same stick will beat the black dog and the white.”

Nalo Hopkinson book The Salt Roads

Source: The Salt Roads (2003), p. 377

World, Dogs

“You're dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it's like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be O.K.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

On being dispassionate and patient in investments, in an interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974); he is contrasting soft-drinks to intoxicating beverages in this example; Buffett eventually became a major investor in Coca-Cola.

People

“I stick to the view I have always held that Hitler missed the bus in September 1938. He could have dealt France and ourselves a terrible, perhaps a mortal, blow then. The opportunity will not recur.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Hilda Chamberlain (30 December 1939), quoted in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy. 1933-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 355
Prime Minister

“The pursuit of happiness is not only self-defeating but also impossible. It’s like trying to catch a carrot hanging by a string tied to a stick attached to your back.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

Happiness, Self-confidence

“By a miracle the 19th amendment has been ratified, we women now have a weapon of defense ... it will be a shame to us if we do not use it … we shall give our enemies a stick with which to break our head, Hold meetings, every time you meet a woman talk to her about going to the polls and vote!”

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) African Americans' rights activist

Source: p.310

Women, Time

“Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 14

Hell, Hurt, Hurtful

“Take some time and put the Bible on your summer reading list. Try and stick with it cover to cover.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

Not because it teaches history; we've shown you it doesn't. Read it because you'll see for yourself what the Bible is all about. It sure isn't great literature. If it were published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes and some quotable phrases, but there's no plot, no structure, there's a tremendous amount of filler, and the characters are painfully one-dimensional. Whatever you do, don't read the Bible for a moral code: it advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition, and murder. Read it because: we need more atheists — and nothin will get you there faster than readin' the damn Bible.
"The Bible: Fact or Fiction?" Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, season 2 episode 6 (6 May 2004)
2000s

Time, Reading, Summer

“The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

Sense

“I love anybody who's willing to stick to their own vision, their own voice, who's not easily swayed by money or by financiers who are going to tell them what they should do.”

Mary Elizabeth Winstead (1984) American actress and singer

"Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Honestly" in Interview Magazine (10 October 2012) https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/mary-elizabeth-winstead-smashed

Love, Money

“Hatred is a leech: The thing that sticks to a person's skin; that feeds off them and drains the sap out of one's spirit. It changes a person, and does not leave until it has sucked the last drop of peace from them.”

Chigozie Obioma (1986) Nigerian writer

The fishermen (2015)

Peace, Change, Personality

“The Jews belong to a dark and repulsive force. One knows how numerous this clique is, how they stick together and what power they exercise through their unions. They are a nation of rascals and deceivers.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Oration in Defense of Flaccus. See Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe https://books.google.com.br/books?id=wefkDwAAQBAJ&pg=108 by Robert Orlando, p. 108.

Exercises

“If by sticking to the moral principles you have followed all your life, you jeopardize your happiness and that of others, throw over your principles. Principles for principles' sake -that is not wisdom; that is obstinacy. Principles should be fluid because life is fluid."”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Source: As quoted in “Don Pañong – Genius" by A.V.H. Hartendorp in Philippine Magazine (September 1929), p. 211.

Life, Wisdom, Happiness

“Next to a sum of money down, a grievance is the best thing you can have. A man who can stick to a grievance year after year will always make money out of it at last.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: John Caldigate, Ch. 53

Money

“Philosophy is more often the systematization of the prejudices of philosophers than the systematization of nature. Distrust all generalizations: stick to the concrete.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Remarkable Quotes
Source: As quoted in “Don Pañong – Genius" by A.V.H. Hartendorp in Philippine Magazine (September 1929), p. 211.

Nature

“I don’t believe in identity politics in literature—or in life much, either. Indeed the current scholarly enchantment with identity politics strikes me as a more intellectual version of the warning oft heard around Sunnyside when I was growing up: “Stick with your own kind.””

Maureen Corrigan (1955) American journalist and writer

Source: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading (2005), Chapter 2 (p. 70)
Context: Family and cultural origins are crucial to self-definition, but they’re not the end of the story. I certainly don’t think that we readers only or even chiefly enjoy or understand books whose main characters mirror us. In fact, the opportunity to become who we are decidedly not—whether it’s Amis’s Dixon or Philip Roth’s Portnoy or Ellison’s Invisible Man or Kafka’s beetle—is one of the greatest gifts reading offers. Women readers get to serve on that floating boy’s club, the Pequod; male readers get to step into Elizabeth Bennet’s shoes and teach Mr. Darcy the dance of humility; readers of either gender who are not African American get to crawl toward freedom alongside Toni Morrison’s Sethe. One of the most magical and liberating things about literature is that it can transport us readers into worlds totally unlike our own.

Life, Literature

“Now remember this, when a man sticks his hand out to you, you shake it. Then kick him really hard when he's not looking.”

Bobby Heenan (1944–2017) American professional wrestler, professional wrestling commentator and manager

Source: World Wrestling Federation (1984-1993), Royal Rumble (1993)

“We urge the US to stick to the 'one China' principle and the three joint communiques.”

Zhu Fenglian (1977)

Source: "Biden administration invites Taiwan to its 'Summit for Democracy,' infuriating Beijing" in CNN https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/23/asia/biden-taiwan-summit-for-democracy-intl-hnk/index.html (24 November 2021)

“Stick to it, boy,
Through the thick and the thin of it!
Work for the joy
That is born of the din of it.
Failures beset you,
But don't let them fret you;
Dangers are lurking,
But just keep on working.
If it's worthwhile and you're sure of the right of it,
Stick to it, boy, and make a real fight of it!”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Stick to It, first stanza.
Source: The Passing Throng (1923)

Boy, Failure, Joy, Fight

“The stick-together families are happier by far
Than the brothers and the sisters who take separate highways are.
The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make
A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break.
And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun
Are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: Just Folks (1917), The Stick-Together Families, stanza 1.

Death, People, Family, Business

“A common thief with a gun in his hand isn’t half as dangerous as an engineer with a stick of dynamite.”

James Blish book Black Easter

Source: Black Easter (1968), Chapter 12 (p. 110)

“People are chameleons, and you adapt to your surroundings. If you're not willing to put the right people around you or stick to the right group of friends or keep the right influences around you, it makes everything more difficult.”

David Henrie (1989) American actor

David Henrie Interview: "There’s Someone out There That’s Got My Eye, but We’re Just Seeing Where It Goes" (26 January 2015) Smashing Interviews Magazine https://smashinginterviews.com/interviews/actors/david-henrie-interview-theres-someone-out-there-thats-got-my-eye-but-were-just-seeing-where-it-goes

People