Quotes about still
page 24

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money, Way, Feeling, Drink

“One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

Children, Truth, Books

“Tombed in the solid night of starless space;
From nearest living orb so far removed,
That light, of all material things most swift,
Myriads on myriads of earth's years must speed,
Ere the mere outskirts of that Stygian gloom,
If ever, it might reach,-at rest eterne,
Lies the cold wreck of an extinguished sun.
Prime glory once of all heaven's radiant host;
Body, for soul of purest light most fit-
'Tween its first darkening, and eclipse complete,
Streamed years which might eternity appear;
While into ether, like the particles,
Invisible, which are the breath of flowers,
The mighty bulk its softer elements
Still ever was exhaling. As when flesh
And sinew of earth's monster Mastodon,
By the slow wasting of the elements,
All are dissolved, and hard, enduring bones
Alone remain,- even so, of this immense,-
When, by the ocean waves of centuries,
Millions succeeding millions, worn away,-
The adamantine skeleton alone,
In darkness, silence, utter solitude,
A ruin for eternity, was left.”

Edwin Atherstone (1788–1872) British writer

Israel in Egypt, Book the First (1861)

Soul, Flowers, Solitude, Light

“In this assembly, every political school has its teachers — every creed has its adherents — and I may safely say, that this banquet is the tribute of United Ireland to the representative of American benevolence. Being such, I am at once reminded of the dinner which took place after the battle of Saratoga, at which Gates and Burgoyne — the rival soldiers — sat together. Strange scene! Ireland, the beaten and the bankrupt, entertains America, the victorious and the prosperous! Stranger still! The flag of the Victor decorates this hail — decorates our harbour — not, indeed, in triumph, but in sympathy — not to commemorate the defeat, but to predict the resurrection, of a fallen people! One thing is certain — we are sincere upon this occasion. There is truth in this compliment. For the first time in her career, Ireland has reason to be grateful to a foreign power. Foreign power, sir! Why should I designate that country a "foreign power," which has proved itself our sister country? England, they sometimes say, is our sister country. We deny the relationship — we discard it. We claim America as our sister, and claiming her as such, we have assembled here this night. Should a stranger, viewing this brilliant scene inquire of me, why it is that, amid the desolation of this day — whilst famine is in the land — whilst the hearse-plumes darken the summer scenery of the island, whilst death sows his harvest, and the earth teems not with the seeds of life, but with the seeds of corruption — should he inquire of me, why it is, that, amid this desolation, we hold high festival, hang out our banners, and thus carouse — I should reply, "Sir, the citizens of Dublin have met to pay a compliment to a plain citizen of America, which they would not pay — 'no, not for all the gold in Venice'”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

to the minister of England."
Ireland and America (1846)

Life, Death, People, Truth

“In most of the old colonial world, the struggle for independence is coming to an end. Even in areas behind the Curtain, that which Jefferson called "the disease of liberty" still appears to be infectious. With the passing of ancient empires, today less than 2 percent of the world's population lives in territories officially termed "dependent." As this effort for independence, inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort — for interdependence — is transforming the world about us. And the spirit of that new effort is the same spirit which gave birth to the American Constitution. That spirit is today most clearly seen across the Atlantic Ocean. The nations of Western Europe, long divided by feuds far more bitter than any which existed among the 13 colonies, are today joining together, seeking, as our forefathers sought, to find freedom in diversity and in unity, strength.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

World, Disease, Birth, Effort

“The world still needs
Its champion as of old, and finds him still.”

Lewis Morris (poet) (1833–1907) Welsh poet in the English language

The Epic of Hades (1877), "Herakles".

World

“There is none like to me!' says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.”

Rudyard Kipling book The Jungle Book

Kaa's hunting.
The Jungle Book (1894)

Thinking

“Among the unexpected revelations of human nature that suddenly astonish historians, one of the least reasonable was the passionate outburst of religious devotion to the ideal of feminine grace, charity and love that took place here in Normandy while it was still a part of the English kingdom, and flamed up into almost fanatical frenzy among the most hard-hearted and hard-headed race in Europe.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, Nature, Passion, Heart

“Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping
In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

In his letter to Vincent Novello, November 8, 1830.

Sleep, Dead

“Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

The Listeners (1912)

Silence, Housing

“Still, you must know that the fear of death is irrational; death comes to everyone.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 25 (p. 235)

Death, Fear

“For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Ch. 13

Time

“"I'm not worried," I said. And I wasn't, because I thought things would be fine. And even though I was wrong, it is still not so bad a way to set your mind toward the unknown just when you are coming into the face of it.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Wildlife (1990), p. 17

Way

“The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part I
The City of Dreadful Night (1870–74)

Solitude

“The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only philosophy with which a thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have to say here. But if, besides this, the reader has lingered in the school of the divine Plato, he will be so much the better prepared to hear me, and susceptible to what I say. And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century enjoys over previous ones, because I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century: if, I say, the reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to him. My work will not speak to him, as to many others, in a strange and even hostile tongue; for, if it does not sound too vain, I might express the opinion that each one of the individual and disconnected aphorisms which make up the Upanishads may be deduced as a consequence from the thought I am going to impart, though the converse, that my thought is to be found in the Upanishads, is by no means the case.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

:s:The World as Will and Representation/Preface to the First Edition Kants Philosophie also ist die einzige, mit welcher eine gründliche Bekanntschaft bei dem hier Vorzutragenden gradezu vorausgesetzt wird. — Wenn aber überdies noch der Leser in der Schule des göttlichen Platon geweilt hat; so wird er um so besser vorbereitet und empfänglicher seyn mich zu hören. Ist er aber gar noch der Wohllhat der Veda's theilhaft geworden, deren uns durch die Upanischaden eröfneter Zugang, in meinen Augen, der größte Vorzug ist, den dieses noch junge Jahrhundert vor den früheren aufzuweisen hat, indem ich vermuthe, daß der Einfluß der Samskrit-Litteratur nicht weniger tief eingreifen wird, als im 14ten Jahrhundert die Wiederbelebung der Griechischen: hat also, sage ich, der Leser auch schon die Weihe uralter Indischer Weisheit empfangen und empfänglich aufgenommen; dann ist er auf das allerbeste bereitet zu hören, was ich ihm vorzutragen habe. Ihn wird es dann nicht, wie manchen Andern fremd, ja feindlich ansprechen; da ich, wenn es nicht zu stolz klänge, behaupten möchte, daß jeder von den einzelnen und abgerissenen Aussprüchen, welche die Upanischaden ausmachen, sich als Folgesatz aus dem von mir mitzutheilenden Gedanken ableiten ließe, obgleich keineswegs auch umgekehrt dieser schon dort zu finden ist. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig 1819. Vorrede. pp.XII-XIII books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=0HsPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR12 The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Wisdom, Hostility, School, Literature

“When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

Democracy, Effort, Heart, Falseness

“I'm still at work with my hand to the plough and my face to the future. The shadows of evening … lengthen about me but morning is in my heart. … the testimony I bear is this: that the castle of enchantment is not yet behind me, it is before me still and daily I catch glimpses of its battlements and towers. The best of life is always further on. The real lure is hidden from our eyes, somewhere behind the hills of time.”

William Mulock (1843–1944) Canadian politician, judge, academic administrator

At age 87, [A Complimentary Luncheon to The Right Honourable Sir William Mulock …, The Empire Club of Canada Addresses, http://speeches.empireclub.org/60525/data, 13 February 1930]

Life, Time, Future, Heart

“The management theory jungle is still with us… Perhaps the most effective way [out of the jungle] would be for leading managers to take a more active role in narrowing the widening gap… between professional practice and our college and university business”

Harold Koontz (1909–1984)

schools
Source: "The Management Theory Jungle Revisited," 1980, p. 186 ; as cited in Daniel A. Wren & Arthur G. Bedeian (2009). The evolution of management thought. p. 419-420

School, Way, Business, Universe

“In boxing, the style has changed over the years from crouching to being more and more vertical. Also people used to jump around, but the modern boxer like Tyson just moves in flat footed to demolish his opponent in a scientific way. In Wing Chun a person does not bob as in boxing. When two beginners fight it doesn't matter how they fight, but against professionals it makes a difference. Even a smaller [person] is better off to keep the body vertical and step back, then to bob and weave. This is because the hand can move faster than the body. Boxing is still like a game because there are rules for how you can hit and how you can't hit. If you attack someone and they bend their head, then in Wing Chun you can still hit them with your hand even without pulling your hand back.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Boxing Source: Comments From Wong Shun Leung and Tsui Shan Ting, by Ray Van Raamsdonk http://www.springtimesong.com/wcqanda.htm

People, Way, Game, Change

“In retrospect… it is interesting to note that the original problem that started my research is still outstanding -- namely the problem of planning or scheduling dynamically over time, particularly planning dynamically under uncertainty. If such a problem could be successfully solved it could eventually through better planning contribute to the well-being and stability of the world.”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

Dantzig (1991) as cited in: " Professor George Dantzig: Linear Programming Founder Turns 80 http://www.stanford.edu/group/SOL/dantzig.html", in: SIAM News, November 1994.

World, Problem, Time

“I can still enjoy sex at 74 - I live at 75, so it's no distance.”

Bob Monkhouse (1928–2003) English entertainer

Independent on Sunday obituary http://web.archive.org/web/20100522031727/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bob-monkhouse-jokewriter-to-the-stars-and-the-longreigning-king-of-primetime-comedy-dies-at-75-578058.html

Sex

“The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse
Suggested that, at the final funeral,
The music halted and the horse stood still.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

Music, Horse

“For me, Still's pictorial dramas are an extension of the Greek Persephone myth. As he himself has expressed it, his paintings are 'of the Earth, the Damned, and of the Recreated'. Every shape becomes an organic entity, inviting the multiplicity of associations inherent in all living things. To me they form a theogony of the most elementary consciousness, hardly aware of itself beyond the will to live – a profound and moving experience. [in the catalogue introduction for the first one-man-show of Clyfford Still]”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

in Art of this Century, February 12 – March 2, 1946, Peggy Guggenheim Papers on the work of Clyfford Still; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 203
1940's

Painting

“When you're interested in somebody, and you think they might be interested in you, you should point out all your beauty problems and defects right away, rather than take a chance they won't notice them... On the other hand, say you have a purely temporary beauty problem—a new pimple, lackluster hair, no-sleep eyes, five extra pounds around the middle. Still, whatever it is, you should point it out... If you don't point out these things they might think that your temporary beauty problem is a permanent beauty problem... If they really do like you for yourself, they'll be willing to use their imagination to think of what you must look like without your temporary beauty problem.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 4: Beauty

Beauty, Imagination, Problem, Thinking

“With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War.”

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

Page 141
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)

War

“But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness—each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked—each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.”

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) British historian

Christianity, Diplomacy and War (1953), p. 43.

“Thus heavenly hope is all serene,
But earthly hope, how bright soe’er,
Still fluctuates o’er this changing scene,
As false and fleeting as ’t is fair.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

"On Heavenly Hope and Earthly Hope".
need further publication dates

Hope, Change, Falseness

“I hated myself. I had created nothing, I belonged to nothingness, to the néant, and it seemed to me that my own death was the only thing that I could create; and still, even then, I thought it might accuse everyone who had ever known me. It would validate all my cynicism, it would prove all my solitary selfishness; it would stand, and be remembered, as a final dark victory.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Death, Hate, Victory, Selfishness

“Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2010s

Women, Men, Youth, Justice

“One reason that Christian theology is so detached from larger intellectual or artistic movements is that it has not suffered consciously a crisis of its expressive forms. At a cultural moment when most humanistic disciplines—not to say, literature and all of the fine arts—have passed through several generations of radical formal innovation, theology is still written as if the conventional forms posed no problems.”

Mark D. Jordan (1953)

Christian Rhetoric: Scraps for a Manifesto

Art, Literature, Problem, Suffering

“Many who have visited me in Washington in the past few months may have been surprised when I have told them that personally and because of my own daily contacts with all manner of difficult situations I am more concerned and less cheerful about international world conditions than about our immediate domestic prospects.
I say this to you not as a confirmed pessimist but as one who still hopes that envy, hatred and malice among Nations have reached their peak and will be succeeded by a new tide of peace and good-will.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Address at Chautauqua, New York (1936)

World, Peace, Hope, Past

“Harry Dresden: We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind-graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, White Night (2007), Chapter 31

Love, Life, Pain, Hope

“Yet sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up,
He felt with spirit so profound.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Matthew.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Secret

“During the last few years it has become apparent that the concept of "machine" must be very greatly extended if it is to include the most modern developments. Especially is this true if we are studying the brain and attempting to identify the type of mechanism that is responsible for the brain’s outstanding powers of thought and action. It has become apparent that when we used to doubt whether the brain could be a machine, our doubts were due chieﬂy to the fact that by ‘‘machine’’ we understood some mechanism of very simple type. Familiar with the bicycle and the typewriter, we were in great danger of taking them as the type of all machines. The last decade, however, has corrected this error. It has taught us how restricted our outlook used to be; for it developed mechanisms that far transcended the utmost that had been thought possible, and taught us that ‘‘mechanism’’ was still far from exhausted in its possibilities. Today we know only that the possibilities extend beyond our farthest vision.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

W. Ross Ashby (1951), "Statistical Machinery". In: Thales Vol 7. p.1 as cited in: Peter M. Asaro (2008) " From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Ampliﬁers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20Ashby.pdf"

Error, Study

“On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's canon rattle. Then away, then away, then away to the fight! Go meet those Southern Traitors with iron will and should your courage falter boys, remember Bunker Hill. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! The stars and stripes forever! Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! As our fathers crushed oppression deal with those who breathe Secession. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Though Beauregard and Wigfall. Their swords may whet. Just tell them Major Anderson. Has not surrendered yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Is Virginia, too, seceeding? Washington's remains unheeding? Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Unfold our country's banner. In triumph there and let the rebels desecrate that banner if they dare. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Volunteers, be up and doing. Still the good old path pursuing. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Your sires, who fought before you have led the way. Then follow in their footsteps and be as brave as they. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle then away, then away, then away to the fight. The star that lights our Union shall never set! Though fierce may be the conflict we'll gain the victory yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!”

Fanny J. Crosby (1820–1915) American poet, lyricist and composer

Dixie For The Union http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/dixie/lyrics.html#union. 1860s

Way, Star, Boy, Courage

“In 1736 I lost one of my Sons, a fine Boy of 4 Years old, by the Smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation. This I mention for the Sake of Parents who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

On Immunization, Part III, p. 83.
The Autobiography (1818)

Way, Boy, Forgiveness, Parent

“I was flabbergasted. How could it be that someone found evidence convincing but was still not convinced? The answer, of course, was that his religion had immunized him against my evidence.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. xv

Religion

“When people look for the road in the clouds
The cloud road disappears
The mountains are tall and steep
The streams are wide and still
Green mountains ahead and behind
White clouds to east and west
If you want to find the cloud road
Seek it within”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

People, Mountain

“I have been working with silicone for years. While still studying, I painted on unusual materials, for example on a soft felt. I like material that easily surrenders – you can tame them and "go out" to the third dimension, and at the same time sanctify something that is considered ordinary. Once, I painted on sponges over twenty centimeters long, which create a great illusion of sandstone.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Study, Time, Painting

“Darwin's theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it's been under attack since day one. That's just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we'd still be debating Newton with idiots too.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian 2 August 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/02/television.television Guardian columns

God, Books, Beauty

“Monsieur, mon cousin,

I have seen the letters you have sent me by Buckingham herald, whereby I understand that you want my friendship in good form and manner, which contents me well enough; for I have no intention of breaking such truces as have previously been concluded between the late King of most noble memory, my brother, and you for as long as they still have to run. Nevertheless, the merchants of this my kingdom of England, seeing the great provocation your subjects have given them in seizing ships and merchandise and other goods, are fearful of venturing to go to Bordeaux and other places under your rule until they are assured by you that they can surely and safely carry on trade in all the places subject to your sway, according to the rights established by the aforesaid truces. Therefore, in order that my subjects and merchants may not find themselves deceived as a result of this present ambiguous situation, I pray you that by my servant this bearer, one of the grooms of my stable, you will let me know in writing your full intentions, at the same time informing me if there is anything I can do for you in order that I may do it with a good heart. And farewell to you, Monsieur mon cousin.”

Richard III of England (1452–1485) English monarch

Letter sent, as King of England, 18 August, 1483, to Louis XI of France. Reprinted in Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA

Friendship, Fear, Understanding, Memory

“It is unfortunate that he still has nonfree software in his computer. He needs to defenestrate it (which means, either throw Windows out of the computer or throw the computer out of the window).”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On hearing someone owns a GNU+Linŭ/Windows dual boot machine, quoted in "Richard Stallman’s Opinion On Dual Booting – “Defenestrate It”" in digitizor (31 May 2011) http://digitizor.com/2011/05/31/richard-stallmans-opinion-on-dual-booting-defenestrate-it/ 2010s

“At this late stage in the history of American capitalism I'm not sure I know how much testimony still needs to be presented to establish the relation between profit and theft.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 4, The Romance of Crime, p. 87

History

“The point is that we are among those who cannot get their mouths around all the little Yeses that add up to tacit acceptance of a world run by crackpot realists and subject to blind drift. And that, you see, is something to which we do belong; we belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting. Our minds are not yet captive.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Source: Letters & Autobiographical Writings (1954), p. 185.

World, Personality

“We have to recover those islands, we have to recover them for the people on them are British and British stock and they still owe allegiance to the Crown and want to be British. We have to do what is necessary to recover those islands…When you stop a dictator there are always risks but there are great risks in not stopping a dictator. My generation learned that a long time ago.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for ITN (5 April 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104913 regarding the Falkland Islands First term as Prime Minister

People, Learning, Time

“For a thousand years I have been asking myself, "what will I do now?" And still I need not answer.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Desde hace mil años me pregunto: ¿qué haré ahora? Y aún no necesito responderme.
Voces (1943)

“I do hereby and forever abandon abandoning all hope. Honestly, I give up on giving up. I'm just not cut out to be some hopeless, disillusioned wretch with no aspirations for the rest of the eternity, sprawled catatonic in my own feces on a cold stone floor. In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple of days of hopelessness. Future scientists would call it Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case of history chasing rainbows.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Damned (2011)

Hope, Way, History, Optimism

“I had innumerable visions at that time [c. 1903]; wherever I looked, Nature was alive, the sky, the clouds, on every stone and among the branches of the trees, everywhere my creatures stirred and lived their still or wild, lively lives, arousing my excitement and crying out to be painted.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

1900 - 1920

Nature, Tree, Time, Painting

“Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"The Habit of Perfection", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Music, Silence, Singing

“Normally, anyone disreputable enough to flatly affirm such positive proclamations without adequate support would lose the respect of his peers and be accused of outright fraud; anyone but a religious advocate that is. When allegedly holy men do the exact same thing, then its not called fraud anymore. Its called “revealed truth” instead. That’s quite a double-standard, innit? Like when some minister gets on stage at one of those stadium-sized churches -to state as fact who God is and what God is, and what he wants, hates, needs, won’t tolerate, or will do -for whom, how, and under what conditions; they don’t have any data to show they’re correct about any of it, yet they speak so matter-of-factly. Even when they contradict each other they’re all still completely confident in their own empty assertions! So why do none of these tens of thousands of head-bobbing, mouth-breathing, glassy-eyed wanna-believers have the presence of mind to ask, “how do you know that?” Well, for all those who never asked the question, here’s the answer; they don’t know that! There’s no way anyone could know these things. They’re making it up as they go along. These sermons are the best possible example of blind speculation; asserted as though it were truth and sold for tithe. If anyone or everyone else would be called liars for claiming such things without any evidentiary basis then why make exceptions for evangelists? For these charlatans are obviously liars too! The clergy are in the same category of questionable credibility as are commissioned salesmen, politicians, and military recruiters.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"4th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nhqGfN6t8, Youtube (December 25, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men, God, Hate, Truth

“I thought, beloved, to have brought to you
A gift of quietness and ease and peace,
Cooling your brow as with the mystic dew
Dropping from twilight trees.
Homeward I go not yet; the darkness grows;
Not mine the voice to still with peace divine:
From the first fount the stream of quiet flows
Through other hearts than mine.
Yet of my night I give to you the stars,
And of my sorrow here the sweetest gains,
And out of hell, beyond its iron bars,
My scorn of all its pains.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

"For Brian when he is grown up this handful of The Nuts of Knowledge I have gathered on The Secret Streams".
The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Pain, Peace, Star, Hell

“Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women's overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force.This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, how ever, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of pay rolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it.So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to "pay for itself."After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors, and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment.”

Henry Hazlitt book Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Curse of Machinery (ch. 7)

Women, Men, Money, Hope

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women, People, World, Behavior

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Death, Pain, Hope

“Did you know that in 1900 I had the bold idea of renewing German art?... First of all I needed to invent a technique of grasping everything while it was in motion, and it was Rembrandts drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett in Munich that showed me how. I practiced seizing things quickly in bold strokes, wherever I was, walking and standing still.... and in this way I learned how to depict movement itself, and I found new forms in the ecstasy and haste of this work.... and to these forms was added pure colour, as pure as the sun generates it.... in line with Goethe's theory [of colours]. It makes pictures much more colorful. Making wood-cuts, which I'd learnt as a fifteen-year-old from my father, helped me to stabler and simpler forms. And armed in this way I returned to Dresden.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

In a letter to Curt Valentin, 1937; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 38
1930's

Art, Color, Way, Idea

“Neil Cavuto: Yeah but, you can't, Congressman, we've got a pretty good economy going here, right? We've got productivity soaring. We've got retail sales that are strong. We've got corporate earnings that for, what, the 19th quarter, are up double digit? We've got a market chasing highs, I mean, this isn't happening in a vacuum, right?
Ron Paul: Yeah, that's nice, but when you have to borrow, you know… My personal finances would be very good if I borrowed a million dollars every month. But, someday, the bills will become due. And the bills will come due in this country, and then we'll have to pay for it. We can't afford this war, and we can't afford the entitlement system.
Neil Cavuto: Look, Congressman, did you say this 10 years ago, when the numbers were similarly strong…
Ron Paul: Go back and check.
Neil Cavuto: …and we were still borrowing a good deal then.
Ron Paul: That's right, that means the dollar bubble is much bigger than ever.
Neil Cavuto: So what's gonna happen?
Ron Paul: We've had the NASDAQ bubble collapse already. We have the housing bubble in the middle of a collapse, so the dollar bubble will collapse as well. We have to live within our means. You can't print money out of the blue, and think you can print your money into prosperity.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX News, May 15, 2007 http://www.newshounds.us/2007/05/16/rep_ron_paul_tells_fox_newsrepublicans_the_truth_they_dont_like_hearing_it.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU2RK0TNbXk 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, War, Thinking, Strong

“I talked for hours, and for the first time in my life, I could see that I’d lived two very different lives ever since I’d started school. On the ranch I’d lived a life full of love and work and warm, good feelings. At school I’d been treated with so much … physical and mental abuse that I was still filled with so much rage; it was hard for me to even think about it.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Love, Life, School, Feeling

“You know, I'm still in awe of movie stars-to me they're just not human. Guess it's because I'm from a small town. I wonder if I'll ever get over it?”

Leigh Snowden (1929–1982) American actress

How Leigh Snowden Broke into Movies http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1956/06/03/page/328/article/how-leigh-snowden-broke-into-movies#text (June 3, 1956)

Star

“The forces of being remain. They are what the writer, as distinct from the contemporary popular mythmaker, still engage today, as myth in its ancient form attempted to do.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

“Coadaptation is the process whereby systems of related agents take mutual advantage of each other in order to change more effectively, yet still be adaptive in each agent's particular situation.”

Shona Brown (1960) businessperson

Source: Competing on the Edge, 1998, p. 60

Change

“A work upon the plan originally contemplated by the Author seems still to be required, to initiate the young and uninstructed in the study of those MEDALS 0F CREATION—those electrotypes of nature—the mineralized remains of the plants and animals which successively flourished in the earlier ages of our planet, in periods incalculably remote, and long antecedent to all human history and tradition. With this conviction the present volumes are offered… as a guide for the Student and the Amateur Collector of fossil remains; for the intelligent Observer who may desire to possess a general knowledge of the subject, without intending to pursue Geology as a science; and for the Tourist who may wish, in the course of his travels, to employ profitably a leisure hour in quest of those interesting memorials of the ancient physical revolutions of our globe, which he will find everywhere presented to his observation.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Preface to the First Edition
The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)

Age, Travel, History, Intelligence

“How safe and easy the poor man's life and his humble dwelling! How blind men still are to Heaven's gifts!”
O vitae tuta facultas pauperis angustique lares! o munera nondum intellecta deum!

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book V, line 527 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Life, Men

“The period during the First World War was a very exciting time in Paris, with artists, philosophers, and poets continually discussing and arguing about the work with which they were involved. Although I myself am little concerned with abstract theory, I certainly do think of cubism as a form of emancipation essentially different from artistic movements that had preceded it. Thus, impressionism, while it was a revolutionary technique, was still an essentially naturalistic movement concerned with a precise examination of the nature of light and the effect of changing lights on representational scenes and objects. Cubism did add a new dimension to painting and sculpture, a dimension that changed our way of looking at nature and the work of art.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: My life in sculpture, 1972, p. 40

War, World, Art, Way

“That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger — the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Imaginationland," The Daily Dish (25 October 2007)

Fate, Imagination

“Islam is a very powerful but still an undirected force in politics. As a possible factor in international politics, the present prognosis is not very favorable. There have been many attempts at a pan-Islamic policy, none of which has made much progress. One reason for their lack of success is that those who have made the attempt have been so unconvincing. This still leaves the possibility of a more convincing leadership, and there is ample evidence in virtually all Muslim countries of the deep yearning for such a leadership and a readiness to respond to it. The lack of an educated modern leadership has so far restricted the scope of Islam and inhibited religious movements from being serious contenders for power. But it is already very effective as a limiting factor and may yet become a powerful domestic political force if the right kind of leadership emerges.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

Education, Success, Country

“Our military force at this moment is as efficient in discipline as it is in numbers; and this not only in the regular army, but in the militia, volunteers, and other descriptions of force. We have six hundred thousand men in arms, besides a navy of two hundred thousand. The masculine energies of the nation were never more conspicuous, and the country never at any period of its history stood in so proud and glorious a position, as at present. After a conflict for fifteen years, against an enemy whose power had been progressively increasing, we are still able to maintain the war with augmenting force and a population, by the pressure of external circumstances, consolidated into an impregnable military mass. Our physical strength has risen when it has been called for; and if we do not present the opposition of numerous fortresses to an invader as the continent does, we present the more insuperable barrier of a high-spirited, patriotic, and enthusiastic people.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (26 February 1810), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 3-4.
1810s

Men, War, People, History

“If you're trying to get a lot of money and attention and cars and just stuff like that, being in a band is a really bad way to do it, because it takes a lot of work, it's constant work, it's very grueling, and you don't really have time to spend money. So that would probably not even make my top 10 list of ways to make a lot of money, because records aren't selling anymore. The richest musician in America still doesn't even come close to a mid-level athlete.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 1 - 10.06.08

Money, Cars, Way, Time

“I'm still figuring out who I am. But at least I know what I want.”

Katherine Heigl (1978) American actress and film producer

InStyle magazine (2009)

“Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are there still!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Thinking, Dead

“Austerity may still be felt here in the North West but Brussels doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.”

Louise Bours (1968) British politician

No Signs of Austerity at Euroean Cocktail Party http://www.louiseboursmep.co.uk/no-signs-of-austerity-at-european-cocktail-party/ (June 30, 2014)

“To know oneself as well as one can; to avoid self-deception and foster no illusions; to learn what one can about the plain natural truth of things, and make one's valuations accordingly; to waste no time in speculating upon vain subtleties, upon "things which are not and work not"; — this perhaps is hardly the aim of an academic philosophy, but it is what a practical philosophy keeps steadily in view. Because the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius so consistently does keep just this in view, it still remains, and for those who can take it will probably always remain, the best of handbooks to the art of living.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 304-305

Truth, Art, Nature, Learning

“To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Dubya's Double Dip?" http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html, The New York Times, 2 August 2002 :It should be noted that Krugman was being sarcastic http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/when-someone-says-paul-krugman-called-for-greenspan-to-create-a-housing-bubble-back-in-2002-they-are-trying-to-say-that-they-are-either-a-fool-or-a-liar; two weeks later, he wrote an article http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/16/opinion/mind-the-gap.html warning about the dangers of a housing bubble. The New York Times Columns

Business, Thinking, Fight, Housing

“He adjudicated the case in a manner I still find perplexing, but which must have been equitable, since it pleased no one.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 11, section 1 (p. 967)

“If women could be fair and yet not fond,
Or that their love were firm, not fickle still,
I would not marvel that they make men bond
By service long to purchase their good will;
But when I see how frail those creatures are,
I laugh that men forget themselves so far.”

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604) English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era

Poem "If women could be fair and yet not fond", also sometimes titled "Woman's Changeableness". According to Oxford specialist Steven May this is "possibly" by Oxford, but his authorship is not certain. It was printed in variant form as the work of Oxford in 1587, but attributed to "R.W." in the Harleian MS. A version was printed in Britons Bower of Delights (1591) attributed to Oxford.
Poems, Attributed

Love, Women, Men, Forgetting

“There was a fifteen-second patch of silence, then Craig said, 'Isn't it weird that Hotmail accounts still exist?' 'It really is,' said Bev.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation A

Source: Generation A (2009), p. 222

Silence

“There are still people who discuss industrialization as… an alternative to agricultural improvement… this approach is without meaning in the West Indian Islands. There is no choice… between industry and agriculture. The islands need as large agriculture as possible… It is not … that agriculture cannot continue to develop if industry is developed … the opposite is true: agriculture cannot… yield a reasonable standard of living unless new jobs are created off the land”

W. Arthur Lewis (1915–1991) Saint Lucain economist

Lewis (1950; 831-2) as cited in: Mark Figueroa. "Rethinking Caribbean agriculture, re-evaluating Arthur Lewis misunderstood perspective." (2008).

People

“The sacrifice lives, but the sun’s still shining.”

Tanith Lee book East of Midnight

Source: East of Midnight (1977), Chapter 16, “Sorcery East of Midnight” (p. 169)

Sun

“The Buddhist view is more congruent with evolution than are other views. You can actually have beginning-less-ness and still have creation of a particular universe … The part that doesn't jibe for me is the whole notion that consciousness is this separate thing that goes in and out of sentient beings.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

Science and Spirit interview (2004)

Universe, Parting

“As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to "write stories." Still I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air—the indulging in waking dreams—the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Pleasure, Dreams, Success, Training

“If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times. Reason is language — Logos; I gnaw on this marrowbone and will gnaw myself to death over it. It is still always dark over these depths for me: I am still always awaiting an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.”

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden/Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1955-1975), vol. V, p. 177.

Death, Angels, Time

“Every body and every thing conspire to make me as contented as possible in it; yet I have seen too much of the vanity of human affairs, to expect felicity from the splendid scenes of public life. I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learnt, from experience, that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wheresoever we go.”

Martha Washington (1731–1802) First Lady of the United States

Letter to Mercy Warren (1789)

Life, Parting, Dependency, Happiness

“There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

L 16
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

God, People

“Every seven years or so I look around me and I want to look at the society and I want to try and be everyone I'm seeing in the world right now. […] And I've done this all my life. I realized I used to do this in my mother's bedroom when I was 6. I used to be everyone in my village and everyone at school and everyone in the news, and I'm still doing that same show. I'm now 56. I think I can do it in my 80s. I'll just, you know, impersonate everyone around me then in the nursing home.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

Quoted by NPR http://www.npr.org/2016/10/28/499796182/british-comedian-tracey-ullman-brings-celebrity-impersonations-to-hbo in 2016, on what what drives her to do impersonations

Life, World, School, Home

“I gambled and I lost. I failed in securing my options for this choice for myself, but I succeeded in verifying the Dark Age is still with us.”

Jack Kevorkian (1928–2011) American pathologist, euthanasia activist

Quoted in "Between the dying and the dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian's life and the battle to Legalize Euthanasia"‎ - Page 247 - by Neal Nicol, Harry Wylie - 2006
2000s, 2006

Age

“So it's a "truly remarkable achievement, is it? General Tommy Franks says so. Everything is going "according to plan, according to the British. So it's an achievement that the British still have not "liberated" Basra. It is "according to plan" that the Iraqis should be able to launch a scud missile from the Faw peninsula – supposedly under "British control" for more than a week. It is an achievement, truly remarkable of course, that the Americans lose an Apache helicopter to the gun of an Iraqi peasant, spend four days trying to cross the river bridges at Nasiriyah and are then confronted by their first suicide bomber at Najaf.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The monster of Baghdad is now the hero of Arabia http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles202.htm, April 1, 2003 2003

Suicide

“Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their works — with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827) — showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

War

“They were murderers and they still are, but policemen are like dogs on a leash.… The police function under political direction. They go after whoever they are sent after, and that's where the problem comes in.… Black people were moving out of their traditional position in America. Nobody knew what to do about it. The white politicians were confused, the blacks were confused.… the police were told to go out, stop those civil-rights marches … and they went out and did that. When you talk to police now who participated in that, you find out that they were in the same position we were in — just trying to find the right formula.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

Interview by Reason magazine (1986)
1980s

People, Dogs, Problem

“After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. "Your advice," said Cicero, "were good if we were to fight jackdaws."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Cicero
Roman Apophthegms

Fight

“If there had been no Judas, Peter would be the great betrayer. It is only because he stands in the framework of a still greater betrayal that we find a thousand excuses for him and for the faults of the Church continuing and occurring over and over again.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

Source: The Passion from Within (1981), p. 79

Betrayal

“Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class — creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence — it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.

How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible — by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians — to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland

Life, Wisdom, Women, Law

“Would people still use the same demeaning language talking about European gypsies or immigrants? It is fundamentally an old, 19th-century throwback to the idea that that these people are somehow like our ancestors, or backward. It conveys that they are somehow not as intelligent as we are; that they haven't progressed as far as we have. It is fundamentally a colonial mentality.”

Stephen Corry (1951) British anthropologist and activist

Concerning the use of the expressions "stone age" and "primitive" in reference to some indigenous peoples, Journalists need to leave the Stone Age http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/journalists-need-to-leave-the-stone-age-524213.html, The Independent, 23 January 2006

People, Intelligence, Idea