Quotes about still
page 83

“There can be no such thing in the long run as the prosperity of an isolated nation…until the trade of the world once more begins to move from one country to another and goods can be exchanged and paid for—until that happens there is no permanency to the security we have gained. Does not that bring us back to this, that while we all know that we have got to go on, and go on quickly, with this matter of armaments, there is driven into us once more the mad folly of Europe to-day in the expenditure she is making on armaments at the sacrifice of her international trade? We have to do what we can in our conversations with foreign countries to show the folly of this, which, if protracted too long, may bring ruin to us all. Therefore we have still to hold on to the faith that sooner or later it may be possible once again to discuss the reduction of armaments. If and when that time comes we must all of us throw our weight into the effort. This massing of huge armaments on the Continent, even the work that we are doing—the money would be far better used for the progress of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 44-45.
1936

Money, World, Making love, Faith

“The (respective) position of Judaism toward Spinoza coincides with the (respective) position of Europe toward him. However, it does not completely coincide with it. Spinoza played a special role in the Judaism of the past century. When what mattered was the justification of the breakup of the Jewish tradition and the entry of the Jews into modern Europe, perhaps no better, but certainly no more convenient, reference offered itself than the appeal to Spinoza. Who was more suitable for undertaking the justification of modern Judaism before the tribunal of the Jewish tradition, on the one hand, and before the tribunal of modern Europe, on the other, than Spinoza, who, as was almost universally recognized, was a classical exponent of this Europe and who, as one did not grow weary of at least asserting, had thought his thoughts in the spirit of Judaism and by means of Judaism? It is clear that, at a time when modern Europe has been shaken to its foundations, one can no longer justify oneself before this Europe for the sake of Judaism, nor before Judaism for the sake of this Europe, supposing one still wants to do so.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Leo Strauss, Das Testament Spinozas (1932) [original in German]
S - Z

Universe, Time, Past

“It is also a very curious thing. Why should a 17th-century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher whose dense and opaque writings are notoriously difficult to understand incite such passionate devotion, even obsession, among a lay audience in the 21st century? Part of the answer is the drama and mystery at the centre of his life: why exactly was Spinoza so harshly punished by the community that raised and nurtured him? Just as significant, I suspect, is that everyone loves an iconoclast – especially a radical and fearless one that suffered persecution in his lifetime for ideas and values that are still so important to us today. Spinoza is a model of intellectual courage. Like a prophet, he took on the powers-that-be with an unflinching honesty that revealed ugly truths about his fellow citizens and their society.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Steven Nadler, in his article Why Spinoza still matters https://aeon.co/essays/at-a-time-of-zealotry-spinoza-matters-more-than-ever (Aeon.co, 28 April 2016) <br class="br">M - R, Steven Nadler

Love, Life, Truth, Making love

“Spinoza is a highly systematic thinker, but still I do not think I can offer a single key for all things Spinozistic. Personally, one thing which got me excited about Spinoza is his philosophical boldness, i. e., his willingness to pursue philosophical exploration as far as he can, making very little concessions to commonly accepted beliefs and norms. In terms of content, I take his attempt to conceive of God, nature, and ethics in a manner that is free from anthropomorphism and anthropocentric illusions as one of the deepest elements of his philosophical thinking. A closely related issue is his advocacy of actual infinity (an issue that has been mostly neglected in recent literature). Finally, the very attempt to do philosophy systematically (rather than rely on fragmented and disassociated intuitions) and transparently (laying bare the logical structure of his arguments) commands my respect, indeed admiration.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Spinoza's Metaphysics and His Relationship to Hegel and the German Idealists, an interview by Richard Marshall (3:AM Magazine, 30 December 2017) https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/spinozas-metaphysics-relationship-hegel-german-idealists/ <br class="br">M - R

God, Making love, Literature, Nature

“It is true that God is necessity, or, as we may also put it, that he is the absolute Thing: he is however no less the absolute Person. That he is the absolute Person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached: and on that side it falls short of the true notion of God which forms the content of religious consciousness in Christianity. Spinoza was by descent a Jew; and it is upon the whole the Oriental way of seeing things, according to which the nature of the finite world seems frail and transient, that has found its intellectual expression in his system. This Oriental view of the unity of substance certainly gives the basis for all real further development. Still it is not the final idea. It is marked by the absence of the principle of the Western world, the principle of individuality, which first appeared under a philosophic shape, contemporaneously with Spinoza, in the Monadology of Leibnitz.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

God, World, Way, Idea

“When we read Spinoza, we are seized with a feeling like that of seeing nature at its grandest in most vigorous repose: a forest of thoughts, tall as the sky, whose blooming tree-tops sway back and forth, while imperturbable trunks stand rooted in the eternal soil. There is a certain soft breeze in the writings of Spinoza which is inexplicable. It stirs the reader with the winds of the future. The spirit of the Hebrew prophets still rested perhaps on their late descendant. At the same time, there is a seriousness to him, a self-confident pride, a grandeur of thought which also seems to be an inheritance, since Spinoza belonged to one of those families of martyrs which had been expelled from Spain by those most Catholic kings.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Heinrich Heine, On the History of Philosophy and Religion and Other Writings [original in German]
G - L

Family, Feeling, Confidence, Nature

“A terrible commotion rages among them, the populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the cathedral door, appears the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself…. He pauses before the crowd and observes. He has seen all. He has witnessed the placing of the little coffin at His feet, the calling back to life. And now, his dark, grim face has grown still darker; his bushy grey eyebrows nearly meet, and his sunken eye flashes with sinister light. Slowly raising his finger, he commands his minions to arrest Him…”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Grand Inquisitor

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), The Grand Inquisitor

Life, Light, Appearance, Rage

“An honest fellow stripped of all his illusions is the ideal man. Though he may have little wit, his society is always pleasant. As nothing matters to him, he cannot be pedantic; yet is he tolerant, remembering that he too has had the illusions which still beguile his neighbor. He is trustworthy in his dealings, because of his indifference; he avoids all quarreling and scandal in his own person, and either forgets or passes over such gossip or bickering as may be directed against himself. He is more entertaining than other people because he is in a constant state of epigram against his neighbor. He dwells in truth, and smiles at the stumbling of others who grope in falsehood. He watches from a lighted place the ludicrous antics of those who walk in a dim room at random. Laughing, he breaks the false weight and measure of men and things.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

L'honnête homme, détrompé de toutes les illusions, est l'homme par excellence. Pour peu qu'il ait d'esprit, sa société est très aimable. Il ne saurait être pédant, ne mettant d'importance à rien. Il est indulgent, parce qu'il se souvient qu'il a eu des illusions, comme ceux qui en sont encore occupés. C'est un effet de son insouciance d'être sûr dans le commerce, de ne se permettre ni redites, ni tracasseries. Si on se les permet à son égard, il les oublie ou les dédaigne. Il doit être plus gai qu'un autre, parce qu'il est constamment en état d'épigramme contre son prochain. Il est dans le vrai et rit des faux pas de ceux qui marchent à tâtons dans le faux. C'est un homme qui, d'un endroit éclairé, voit dans une chambre obscure les gestes ridicules de ceux qui s'y promènent au hasard. Il brise, en riant, les faux poids et les fausses mesures qu'on applique aux hommes et aux choses.
Maximes et Pensées, #339
Maxims and Considerations, #339

Men, People, Truth, Smile

“There were limits to what art—composed of such genres as portraiture, landscape, still life, and historical painting (the latter of which, in royal academies, enjoyed the highest esteem)—could do to show movement.”

Arthur Danto (1924–2013) American art critic and philosopher

What Art Is (2013), Chap. 1 : Wakeful Dreams

Life, Art, Painting

“He thought about the killing he’d seen, about his final participation in the slaughter on Maro. It still made him want to vomit, the thought of all those people ceasing to exist. Many religions had it that there was another life, another existence following the one known, but Khadaji held no faith in that idea. Maybe so, maybe not. It would be nice, but until it was proven, a person should make the best of his or her time on the physical plane.”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 15 (pp. 130-131)

Life, People, Making love, Faith

“Once, when the bar was slow, he told her about things he’d found in his clients’ pools. Alligators, for example; he’d encountered at least a dozen. Also the occasional snake. Hundreds of frogs. These were to be expected in South Florida, which as far as the native wildlife was concerned was still a swamp, no matter how many houses got built on it.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Novels, Tricky Business (2002), Chapter 7

Housing

“He who must still exhort himself, and be exhorted, to will the good, has as yet no firm and ever-ready will, but wills a will anew every time he needs it. But he who has such a stable will, wills what he wills for ever, and cannot under any circumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book Address to the German Nation

General Nature of New Eduction p 21
Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) 1808, Second Address

Freedom, Time

“No nation which has sunk into this state of dependence can raise itself out of it by the means which have usually been adopted hitherto. Since resistance was useless to it when it was still in possession of all its powers, what can such resistance avail now that it has been deprived of the greater part of them?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book Address to the German Nation

Introduction p. 9-10
Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) 1808, First Address of Fourteen

Parting, Dependency

“Their system of unorganized and antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the idea of increasing the individual hoard gives place to the idea of increasing the common stock can industrial combination be realized, and the acquisition of wealth really begin. Even if the principle of share and share alike for all men were not the only humane and rational basis for a society, we should still enforce it as economically expedient, seeing that until the disintegrating influence of self-seeking is suppressed no true concert of industry is possible.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 22.

Men, Secret, Idea, Suicide

“A thought struck me: if my new album sounds this good on a walkman, what would Roxy Music sound like? A mere two years later I bought one and found out. However, on a train, a few years later still, I had negative synaesthesia eating a bacon sandwich and listening to a solo Ferry album, which turned me vegetarian.”

Robyn Hitchcock (1953) English singer-songwriter and guitarist

I Wanna Go Backwards CD booklet (Chapel Hill, NC: Yep Roc Records, 2007) p. 4.

Music, Training

“We have a moral duty to offer support and safety to LGBT people fleeing repression for which Britain shares responsibility. … It is now Pride season in Britain. Members of the government will wrap themselves in the rainbow flag and issue self-congratulatory statements about how far LGBT rights have come. Don’t let them get away with it. Gay and lesbian refugees are being detained and deported to countries where their safety is at risk, even their lives. The Windrush scandal should lead to a much wider conversation about the persecution of migrants and refugees. … The architects of the British empire helped construct anti-gay laws across the globe that still endure today. The victims of such persecution need our support. Instead, they are being terrorised. It is a national scandal – and the silence over it must end.”

Owen Jones (writer)

The government’s treatment of gay refugees shames Britain https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/07/lgbt-rights-deportation-gay-lesbian-refugees (7 June 2018), The Guardian.

People, Law, Support, Silence

“The materials in these still standard books never betray the author’s original purpose in amassing them: to demonstrate that Christianity is rationally superior to Hinduism.”

John Muir (indologist) (1810–1882) Scottish Sanskrit scholar and Indologist

R.F.Young, quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 10. ISBN 9788185990354 https://web.archive.org/web/20120501043412/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhce/ <br class="br">About John Muir

Books

“I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as females with a relative lightness and, one could say, with an enviable superficiality, whose feelings and mental energies are directed upon all other things in life but sentimental love feelings. After all I still belong to the generation of women who grew up at a turning point in history. Love with its many disappointments, with its tragedies and eternal demands for perfect happiness still played a very great role in my life. An all-too-great role! It was an expenditure of precious time and energy, fruitless and, in the final analysis, utterly worthless. We, the women of the past generation, did not yet understand how to be free. The whole thing was an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labor power which was dissipated in barren emotional experiences. It is certainly true that we, myself as well as many other activists, militants and working women contemporaries, were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center. Nevertheless we would have been able to create and achieve much more had our energies not been fragmentized in the eternal struggle with our egos and with our feelings for another. It was, in fact, an eternal defensive war against the intervention of the male into our ego, a struggle revolving around the problem-complex: work or marriage and love? We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes. Thus despite everything the inevitable inner rebellion ensued, over and over again since love became a fetter. We felt enslaved and tried to loosen the love-bond. And after the eternally recurring struggle with the beloved man, we finally tore ourselves away and rushed toward freedom. Thereupon we were again alone, unhappy, lonesome, but free–free to pursue our beloved, chosen ideal …work. Fortunately young people, the present generation, no longer have to go through this kind of struggle which is absolutely unnecessary to human society. Their abilities, their work-energy will be reserved for their creative activity. Thus the existence of barriers will become a spur.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“I will probably end my life fighting. … I just hope that if it does happen, it will be in an honest and fair competition. My body is fucked but my mind is still here. I’ve still got my senses about me and I know what’s right and wrong, which is the main thing. … I feel proud that I got here without cheating. Proud that I got here without taking any shortcuts and by doing it the proper way. My way. … I’d be champ already if it wasn’t for the cheaters. … We need the Ali Act put in place. Fighters want to know what they’re worth. … These guys don’t get paid jack shit.”

Mark Hunt (1974) New Zealand kickboxer and mixed martial artist

"If I die fighting, that’s fine", in Players Voice (4 July 2017) https://www.playersvoice.com.au/mark-hunt-if-i-die-fighting-thats-fine/#0A07ZKS7jbAZhme6.97.

Life, Hope, Way, Guy

“Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation. Constellations are not natural phenomena but cultural impositions; the lines drawn between stars are like paths worn by the imagination of those who have gone before. This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001)

World, Making love, Travel, Imagination

“Socialism was primarily concerned with fair distribution, in other words a redistribution of income; but this did not mean equal shares for all. The hard worker was still entitled to a larger slice of the national cake than the indolent; the idler should bet nothing at all.”

Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977) Chancellor of Austria

Source: The Brutal Takeover: The Austrian ex-Chancellor’s account of the Anschluss of Austria by Hitler, 1971, p. 46

“It is one of the more subtly tragic aspects of his death, a misfortune not only to a fecund mind that needed free utterance, but to a country which is nearly starved for thought, that he should in these last years have been doomed to silence. He who should have spoken for them—and who might still have spoken for them—went down to the grave voiceless.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

Floyd Dell quotes

Death, Silence, Country

“Professor Lal was already a veteran whose major book, History of the Khaljis, was compulsory reading for students of medieval Indian history from the undergraduate class onwards. I still find it very useful when I teach any course on the Delhi sultanate. … Historiographically the book fell entirely and conspicuously in the genre of nationalist historiography whose hallmark was its challenge· to the portrayal of medieval Indian history as a story of unrelenting conflict between the medieval Muslim rulers and their Hindu subjects. History of the Khaljis is one of the best works in this genre: empirically sound, objective in its assessment of events and persons, non-judgemental in its evaluation of the motives of rulers or their opponents. The remarkable quality gave the book a long life in the discipline, even when newer problematiques of socio-economic history began to displace the ones of dynastic history that had remained the preoccupation of the earlier generation.”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Harbans Mukhia, Obituary, The Indian Historical Review http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/037698360102800245

Life, Books, History, Motivation

“Can I still wish you good luck?”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

“You can wish me what the hell you like. It won’t make any difference. If it did, it would mean I hadn’t prepared well enough.

Chapter 38 (p. 654)
Redemption Ark (2002)

Bad luck

“Norodom Ranariddh is still Norodom Ranariddh; there were many times already that he has joined and then withdrawn– he is tricky.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

by Ou Chanrath, Secretary-General of the Human Rights Party in August 2008.
[Yun Samean, https://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/nrp-accepts-election-result-shuns-srp-1317/, NRP Accepts Election Result, Shuns SRP, 13 August 2008, 2 October 2015, The Cambodia Daily]

Time

“We conversed for about 20 minutes, where most of it were repetitions of questions that I had answered, where he just could not comprehend what my answer was. For example, he asked why I still came for the prom when I was so negative and unappreciative of the school, I answered that I wasn’t celebrating how great the school was, but the things I have learnt from it, being in this environment which was very hostile to me. He didn’t quite comprehend it so he asked the question another 3 or 4 times.”

Amos Yee (1998) blogger

Tumblr postings

Hostility, School, Question, Time

“A graduate of Cornell University, Nye began his career as an engineer. In fact, Boeing still uses his hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor today.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, 'Science Guy' Visits Volcano, The Chronicle, Centralia, Washington, May 18, 2009, Paula Collucci]

Universe

“Health is not to be mistaken for mere existence. It is the balance of the body, mind and self… there rests the mind. If the breath scatters, the mind wanders. If mind wanders, the breath scatters. So still the breath to still the mind. Mind is the king.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 28

Health, Self-confidence

“Ten years ago, alongside the return of the Book of Deer, I was arguing strongly for the return of the Lewis chessmen to Scotland. Sadly this campaign is as yet incomplete. Of the ninety-three pieces known to us today, the National Museum of Scotland holds only eleven. The other eighty-two remain in the British Museum in London. I still find it utterly unacceptable that the Lewis chessmen are scattered around Britain in a bizarre parody of the Barnett Formula. And you can be assured that I will continue campaigning for a united set of Lewis chessmen in an independent Scotland!”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Lecture (December 19, 2007)

Books

“The Muslims, whom I have seen in my time i. e., the 20th century, appearing on the scene of history, were of both kinds, truthful and hypocritical. We confess with grief that amongst the Muslims generally artificial materials were more popular than the genuine ones because it possessed outward, whose popularity is still limited to few, but the temporary glitter of gilded material has started fading out and the genuine gold is stable with its permanent radiance. Now perhaps the Indian Muslim will start appreciating him.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Abid Husain in: p. 3.
About Zakir Hussain, Quest for Truth (1999)

Truth, History, Appearance, Time

“Aryabhatiya, an improved work, is product of mature intellect, which he wrote when he was 23 years old. Unlike in the Aryabhata siddhanta, the civil days are reckoned from one sunrise to the next, a practice which is still prevalent among the followers of Hindu calendar.”

Aryabhata (476–550) Indian mathematician-astronomer

In, p. 244.
Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

“He never discriminated between us children. He got us to learn horse riding. He always used to take us out shooting when hunting was still allowed. My first experience was a tiger hunt when I was 14-year old. We went to Omkar, a favourite hunting place of my father which lies between Begur and Kakanakote forest range. I shot a spotted deer with Daddy’s supervision.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

My daddy, His Highness, the Maharaja of Mysore

Children, Learning, Horse

“It’s difficult to identify where he can still improve. He has already proven to have everything.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Franco Baresi, 2012 http://football-italia.net/19459/baresi-thiago-silva-my-heir <br class="br">From former and current footballers

“Imagine being told that it hadn’t mattered whether the Christians or the Moors got Spain! I can still remember my shock. I got over it fairly quickly, though, because by that time I had learned enough history to know that in the long run it never mattered a damn where any particular race of people planted its collective ass.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

People, Imagination, History, Learning

“The years passed, and sometimes just before I … I awoke, I’d hear music going on inside my head. I’d lie perfectly still, not moving, not waking, and the music would spread all through my body, just as it had done at the pyramids outside Mexico City. Finally I’d leap out of bed and start writing like a madman. Ten, twelve, fifteen hours a day. It was just pouring out of me. It was limitless!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Lie, Music

“And no one would interfere with me because of the loaded gun in my hand. Also, a part of me didn’t give a shit anymore if I was caught or not. I could now see that my objective wasn’t just to kill Moses and all these other teachers who had abused us, but for everyone in all the whole world to know why. This wasn’t going to be a surprise attack. This had to be a cold, premeditated act, completely well planned, just as it had been premeditated and well thought out to torture and beat us Mexican kids, starting in kindergarten, so we’d be a people, a gente, with our heads bowed down to authority forever, thinking we were inferior and worthless. I now realized that this was how you enslaved a people. You didn’t just bring them over in chains from Africa. No, you convinced them that they were inferior, not evolved, subhuman, and then when you took off their shackles, so they could go to work, you’d still have them enslaved and shackled inside of their minds for hundreds of years. And this system of teaching was fine with most Anglo teachers, because in the act of convincing us, los Mexicanos and the Blacks, we were subhuman, they’d also convinced themselves that they were superior!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

People, World, Thinking, Teachers

“And she slapped him across the face, once, twice, three times, but still Ramón continued speaking in Spanish, telling us not to fear, that we were Mexicanos, and that we weren’t their slaves! I quit crying, just like that. My God, I couldn’t believe it, this boy Ramón had to be the bravest human being I’d ever seen. And the huge teacher, she just kept right on slapping him until his face was covered with blood.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

God, Fear, Boy, Teachers

“I was and still am her great admirer and fan. She signified to me the epitome of Indian grace and culture. She possessed in her the mischievous streak of that precocious village belle and the spirited movement of a Shiv Tandav. She looked vulnerable and lost, searching for protection in one moment, yet knowledged and mature in another. You felt like protecting and guarding her from all the evil of the world and to gently wipe away any frayed eyebrows that may have accumulated on her face. Her performances were pure and clean, without effort and deliberate design. They were just a part of her - simple and soft.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

‘Devoted’ Amitabh fetched Waheeda’s chappals

World, Search, Knowledge, Effort

“C. V. Raman was the first to recognize and demonstrate that the energy of photon can undergo partial transformation within matter. I still recall vividly the deep impression that this discovery made on all of us….”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

Albert Einstein on Ramana quoted from Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern Indian Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,

“Gurnemanz is still not absolutely certain that Parsifal is pure and a fool, as he makes the decision to lead Parsifal to the castle of the Graal, for Gurnemanz sang after they both had walked a while: Now pay attention, and let me see, if you are a fool and if you are pure …!”

Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer

The test, if he is a pure fool, shall come to Parsifal first in the Temple of the Graal! This point cannot be worked out further here.
II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)

Making love, Fools, Decision

“The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that the formation of bodies in space is still and at present in progress.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

We live at a time when many have been formed and many are still forming.
Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 20

Idea

“Surely you’ll at least see the Temple? Respect all religions, is my motto, believe in none. Sensible principle. Still, you know, must say, after all, two thousand beautiful priestesses! All ready, willing, able—and I must say—dextrous!”

Avram Davidson book The Phoenix and the Mirror

to do their best to inspire male worshippers with love for their goddess, hah-hah!
Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 8

Religion, Beauty

“We are still on yeno lai and baaro nanna magane (Kannada terms for extreme familiarity) terms with him: if we ever forget and address him as Saar (Sir) since he is a rich superstar and we are all poor, ordinary men, he gets most hurt and offended.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

S H Prakash, his friend
You can see God in him at times (22 December 1999)

Men, Hurt, Forgetting

“Nasruddin, four years ago you were here, and I asked that time also what is your age, and you told me forty years. Now this is absolutely inconsistent – how can you still be forty?”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Nasruddin said, "I am a man of consistency. Once forty, I remain forty always. When I have answered once, I have answered forever! You cannot lead me astray. I am forty, and whenever you ask you will get the same answer."
Osho, And The Flowers Showered (2003), ISBN 817182210X, p. 204

Age, Time

“I’m still just reveling that someone from Hollywood made a speech like that. I hope you’re going to be able to find work after this. I really enjoyed that.”

Jon Voight (1938) American actor

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky congratulating Voight on his June 2009 speech at a Republican fundraiser. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aFfk5skijH5s

Hope

“Though the large runt pigeon, with its massive beak and its huge feet, differs from its blue and barred progenitor the rock, it is a pigeon still.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Though the slender Italian greyhound has a strange contrast with the short-legged bull-dog, they are both dogs in their teeth and in their skull. The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man.
The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)

“Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench—the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The Fifth Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Color, Way, Lying, Country

“There is no doubt for me that Paul Scholes is still in a class of his own. He’s almost untouchable in what he does. I never tire of watching him play. You rarely come across the complete footballer, but Scholes is as close to it as you can get. One of my regrets is that the opportunity to play alongside him never presented itself during my career.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Zinedine-Zidane-has-admitted-not-playing-with-Paul-Scholes-is-one-of-the-biggest-regrets-of-his-career-article560373.html
Zinedine Zidane, August 2010

Football

“You know what’s great about New York? The threshold for citizenship as a New Yorker is actually pretty short. If you come to New York and you still like it two years after you arrived here, and you still think it’s great and you’re having a good time and you haven’t been just totally ground down and go limping back to wherever the fuck you came from, you know what? You’re in!”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

The Layover - New York City

Thinking, Time

“What hurts me the most, personally, is that I still promoted him to field marshal. I wanted to give him this final satisfaction… a man like that besmirches the heroism of so many others at the last moment. He could have freed himself from all sorrow and ascended into eternity and national immortality, but he prefers to go to Moscow.”

Friedrich Paulus (1890–1957) German general

Adolf Hitler, about Paulus surrendering instead of committing suicide.

Hurt, Personality

“Old intelligence hands still remember this good-natured and wise man.”

Ivan Agayants (1911–1968) KGB officer

Vadim Kirpichenko

Intelligence, Nature

“Were an impartial and competent observer of the state of society in these middle colonies asked, whence it happens that Virginia and Maryland (which were the first planted, and which are superior to many colonies and inferior to none, in point of natural advantage) are still so exceedingly behind most of the other British trans-Atlantic possessions in all those improvements which bring credit and consequence to a country?”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

he would answer - They are so, because they are cultivated by slaves. … Some loss and inconvenience would, no doubt, arise from the general abolition of slavery in these colonies: but were it done gradually, with judgement, and with good temper, I have never yet seen it satisfactorily proved that such inconvenience would either be great or lasting. … If ever these colonies, now filled with slaves, be improved to their utmost capacity, an essential part of the improvement must be the abolition of slavery. Such a change would hardly be more to the advantage of the slaves, than it would be to their owners."
"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

Nature, Country

“After the military coup, he was advised to return to his native land. He responded that he would not leave. In the hour of such hardship, he would not abandon the modest people with whom he had lived. He wished to share their lot. Still, shortly after the coup he was forced to leave the area because the military were looking for him, to kill him just as they looked for so many people. All of us who lived in Chile in those years bear witness of that fact. He went to Santiago, where he continued helping people who were fleeing. He fled with those who were fleeing. Even though he himself was in danger, he continued helping others who were persecuted. Once more, he was counseled to leave Chile, and once more he chose to stay and run the same fate shared by the poor and persecuted.”

Antonio Llidó (1936–1974) Spanish priest

Statements made by Fr. Jesus Rodriguez in an interview with Memory and Justice Chile Organisation on June 19, 2003. http://www.memoriayjusticia.cl/english/en_focus-llido.html#A%20Priest

Fate, People, Help

“Throughout time painting has alternately been put to the service of the Church, the State, arms, individual patronage, scientific phenomena, anecdote and decoration … all the marvelous works that have been painted, whatever the sources of inspiration, still live for us because of absolute qualities they possess in common. The creative force and the expressiveness of painting reside materially in the colour and texture of pigments, in the possibilities of form invention and organisation, and in the flat plane on which these elements are brought into play.”

Man Ray (1890–1976) American artist and photographer

As quoted in "American Modernists in Painting take the Public into their Confidence" in Current Opinion Vol LX, No. 5 (May 1916), p. 351

Time, Painting

“The host of specifically religious suggestions and images, in a story that until now has been devoid of such concern, suggests very strongly that Peake is here referring to the Christian religion as a debasing influence. Peake’s treatment of Gormenghast’s ritual shows that he dislikes any system of values imposed on the individual from outside, offering him nothing directly relevant for himself and encouraging him in whatever weakness he possesses. So, here, the Lamb can break down but not build; despite his worshipper’s praise, he does not really understand how to keep his creatures alive. Still the Lamb glories in his power. True, in changing men he has destroyed them, denying them freedom to develop for themselves; to the Lamb, however, that is incidental to his own gratification.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Joseph L. Sanders, “The Passions in Their Clay” Mervyn Peake’s Titus Stories, reprinted in the omnibus edition The Gormenghast Novels published by The Overlook Press, p. 1093

Men, Religion, Understanding, Freedom

“You are the first person who has been able to illustrate the book adequately since Tenniel, though I still argue as I think I argued with you years ago that your Alice is a little bit too much of a gamin.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Graham Greene, quoted in Bandersnatch, 151, July 2011, p. 8

Books, Thinking, Personality

“You had better — all you people at the South — prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily, — I am nearly disposed by now; but this question is still to be settled, — this nigger question I mean; the end of that is not yet.”

John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859) American abolitionist

Provisional Constitution and Ordinances (1858), Prison interview (1859)

People, Question

“Aged Totaram Ji died without suffering. He was an ornament to the Sabramati Ashram. He was not a scholar, yet he was wise. He was a collector of bhajans, but not a scholar of music. With his single-wired instrument he used to charm the people of the ashram. Just as he was, so was his wife. But Totaram died first! Wherever people have gathered, there are conflicts. I do not remember any single incident in which this couple participated, or were in any way the cause. Totaram loved the earth. The fields were his life. He came to the ashram years ago and did not ever leave. They found unfailing encouragement from him. He was a strong Hindu, but his heart was equally disposed towards Hindus, Muslims, and those of other faiths. On him was not even the smell of untouchability, and he had no vices at all. He took no part in politics. Still, his love for his country was strong enough to stand any comparison. Renunciation was easy for him. He adored the ashram.”

Totaram Sanadhya (1876–1947) Fijian writer

Mohandas Gandhi, quoted in T. Sanadhya, My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands (English translation by J.D. Kelly & U.K. Singh, Fiji Museum, 1991), pp. 5-6 http://au.geocities.com/fibiographies/S/SText/TotaramSanadhya.htm.

Love, Life, People, Age

“He adapted the words to the capacity of the Germans, often at the expense of accuracy. He cared more for the substance than the form. He turned the Hebrew shekel into a Silberling, the Greek drachma and Roman denarius into a German Groschen, the quadrans into a Heller, the Hebrew measures into Scheffel, Malter, Tonne, Centner, and the Roman centurion into a Hauptmann. He substituted even undeutsch (!) for barbarian in 1 Cor. 14:11. Still greater liberties he allowed himself in the Apocrypha, to make them more easy and pleasant reading. He used popular alliterative phrases as Geld und Gut, Land und Leute, Rath und That, Stecken und Stab, Dornen und Disteln, matt und müde, gäng und gäbe.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

He avoided foreign terms which rushed in like a flood with the revival of learning, especially in proper names (as Melanchthon for Schwarzerd, Aurifaber for Goldschmid, Oecolampadius for Hausschein, Camerarius for Kammermeister). He enriched the vocabulary with such beautiful words as holdselig, Gottseligkeit.
Erasmus Alber, a contemporary of Luther, called him the German Cicero, who not only reformed religion, but also the German language.
Luther's version is an idiomatic reproduction of the Bible in the very spirit of the Bible. It brings out the whole wealth, force, and beauty of the German language. It is the first German classic, as King James's version is the first English classic. It anticipated the golden age of German literature as represented by Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller,—all of them Protestants, and more or less indebted to the Luther-Bible for their style. The best authority in Teutonic philology pronounces his language to be the foundation of the new High German dialect on account of its purity and influence, and the Protestant dialect on account of its freedom which conquered even Roman Catholic authors.
Notable examples of Luther's renderings of Hebrew and Greek words
Source: The same word silverling occurs once in the English version, Isa. 7:23, and is retained in the R. V. of 1885. The German Probebibel retains it in this and other passages, as Gen. 20:16; Judg. 9:4, etc.
Source: See Grimm, Luther's Uebersetzung der Apocryphen, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1883, pp. 376-400. He judges that Luther's version of Ecclesiasticus (Jesus Sirach) is by no means a faithful translation, but a model of a free and happy reproduction from a combination of the Greek and Latin texts.

Making love, Reading

“I am in the profession of acting and so to suit the character I sometimes have to indulge in kissing and provocative scenes. I have never felt comfortable shooting for kissing sequences. Although, kissing scenes like the ones in Yuva with Abhishek Bachchan and in Hum Tum with Saif were shot in an aesthetic manner. I am still pretty much uncomfortable performing such scenes.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

citation needed
The Actress' Take On Films

Kiss

“Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!”

Matthew Arnold Thyrsis

Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine.
St. 18
Thyrsis (1866)

Tree

“Even if England still continues to increase in civilization and opulence, she may yet, as other stronger states also rapidly augment, perhaps not long retain her present commanding position in the world; and it may be that in future ages the name of Palmerston will be synonymous with her greatest glory. From one generation of Englishman to another, the saying will be handed down: We are all proud of him.”

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

Palmerston's obituary in the Cologne Gazette, 20 October 1865, as translated in the next day's Times

Age, World, Future

“Please respect our need to grieve privately. My heart is broken. I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day. His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals, and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up with the best memories of him.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

[Michelle Williams: Heath Ledger Has Broken My Heart, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, The Daily Telegraph, Web, news.com.au, February 1, 2008, 2008-02-01, http://web.archive.org/web/20080206234312/http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, 2008-02-06]</ref>
[Michelle Williams Breaks Silence on Heath's Death, http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20175486,00.html, People, Web, people.com (Time Inc.), February 1, 2008, 2008-02-02]

Family, Beauty, Girl, Tree

“If we make any kind of decent, useful life for ourselves we have less need to run from it to those diminishing pleasures of the movies. When we go to the movies we want something good, something sustained, we don’t want to settle for just a bit of something, because we have other things to do. If life at home is more interesting, why go to the movies? And the theatres frequented by true moviegoers — those perennial displaced persons in each city, the loners and the losers — depress us. Listening to them — and they are often more audible than the sound track — as they cheer the cons and jeer the cops, we may still share their disaffection, but it’s not enough to keep us interested in cops and robbers. A little nose-thumbing isn’t enough. If we’ve grown up at the movies we know that good work is continuous not with the academic, respectable tradition but with the glimpses of something good in trash, but we want the subversive gesture carried to the domain of discovery. Trash has given us an appetite for art.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Life, Pleasure, Making love, Art

“Or Berlusconi, in Italy, right; the envy of the world, Italy, in terms of history, art and culture, 98 different political parties, and they still managed to elect him!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

He’s so fucking crooked he sleeps on a spiral staircase! So thoroughly corrupt, every time he smiles an angel gets gonorrhoea! He's had so many face-lifts, his face has moved to the top of his head, you have to get on a step-ladder to watch him lie!
On Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
What It Is (2009)

World, Art, History, Envy

“I say, life and figure are distinct attributes of one substance, and as one and the same body may be transmuted into all kinds of figures; and as the perfecter figure comprehends that which is more imperfect; so one and the same body may be transmuted from one degree of life to another more perfect, which always comprehends in it the inferior. We have an example of figure in a triangular prism, which is the first figure of all right lined solid triangular prism, which is the first figure of all right lined solid bodies, where into a body is convertible; and from this into a cube, which is a perfecter figure, and comprehends in it a prism; from a cube it may be turned into a more perfect figure, which comes nearer to a globe, and from this into another, which is yet nearer; and so it ascends from one figure, more imperfect to another more perfect, ad infinitum; for here are no bounds; nor can it be said, this body cannot be changed into a perfecter figure: But the meaning is that that body consists of plane right lines; and this is always chageablee into a perfecter figure, and yet can never reach to the perfection of a globe, although it always approaches nearer unto it; the case is the same in diverse degrees of life, which have indeed a beginning, but no end; so that the creature is always capable of a farther and perfecter degree of life, ad infinitum, and yet can never attain to be equal with God; for he is still infinitely more perfect than a creature, in its highest elevation or perfection, even as a globe is the most perfect of all other figures, unto which none can approach.”

Anne Conway (1631–1679) British philosopher

The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690)

Life, God, Change, Perfection

“Still got your eyes closed, Rach?”

Susan Ruth Johnson (1959)

she called. 'You should have stayed in Brisbane where it's safe!'
Page 346.
Hungry Ghosts (1996)

“The death of John Barrymore made us think again for a minute of F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were very different men: a lot alike. Undoubtedly, they both worked hard, but there was the same sense of a difficult technique easily mastered (too easily perhaps); there was the same legend of great physical magnetism, working incessantly for its own destruction; there was the same need for public confession, either desperate or sardonic; and there was always a good deal of time wasted, usually accompanied by the sweet smell of grapes. We have seen Scott Fitzgerald when everything he said was a childish parody of his own talent, and the last time we saw John Barrymore he was busy with a sick and humiliating parody of his. The similarity probably ends there. Up to the day he died, we believe, Fitzgerald still kept his original and eager devotion to his profession, along, we like to think, with the strict confidence that he might still achieve the strict perfection that was so often almost his. Barrymore, on the other hand, had given up long ago.”

John Barrymore (1882–1942) American actor of stage, screen and radio

Wolcott Gibbs, Season in the Sun (1951)

Death, Men, Confidence, Business

“Loving does not necessarily mean liking. But it still is loving, yes — totally, completely, utterly. Take the key of wisdom and unlock your own heart. Then let people in one by one. Listen to them, with full attention, with all your mind, heart, body and soul, unto exhaustion. And look!”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

the exhaustion will be lifted, and you will be able to listen still more. Yes, love must be communicated person to person; otherwise it will not be effective.
Molchanie (1982)

Love, Wisdom, People, Making love

“The important thing is that Clyff Still – you know his work?”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

and Rothko, and I – we've changed the nature of painting.. .I don't mean there aren't any other good painters. Bill [ Willem the Kooning ] is a good painter, but he's a 'French' painter [Pollock meant: a French-abstract style]. I told him so, the last time I saw him after his last show,. ..all those pictures in his last show start with an image. You can see it even though he's covered it up, or tried to.. ..Style – that's the French part of it. He has to cover it up with style.. [answering Seldon Rodman's question]
In an interview (1956); published in Conversations with Artists, by Seldon Rodman, New York, Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 84-85
1950's

“To take such generous contracts and screw them up so dramatically must suggest that these are the most probably the worst business people ever assembled in one place to run anything. … the civil servants were taken to the cleaners and on the face of it you still end up with a £750 million overspend based on your mismanagement of them. I think they should be sacked, hung drawn and quartered, thrown out of the country and the whole thing (the London Underground) returned to public ownership. I saw that they (Metronet management) wanted to talk to the Mayor about this — wasting their breath sunshine!”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

they can go out and raise the money amongst their shareholders who came here to get their snout in the trough — they screwed it up; they are not getting any of our money!
Remarks made regarding the management of Metronet and the PPP of the London Underground during a Mayor's press conference (13 March 2007)

People, Business, Thinking, Country

“Film has dream, film has music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames in a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness. At the editing table, when I run the trip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood: in the darkness of the wardrobe, I slowly wind one frame after another, see almost imperceptible changes, wind faster — a movement.”

Ingmar Bergman book Laterna Magica

Laterna Magica (1987); The Magic Lantern : An Autobiography as translated by Joan Tate (1988).
Variant translation: Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
As quoted in "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" by John Berger, Sight and Sound (June 1991).

Dreams, Art, Music, Feeling

“Let the business of the world take care of itself … My business is to get the world saved; if this involves the standing still of the looms and the shutting up of the factories, and the staying of the sailing of the ships, let them all stand still. When we have got everybody converted they can go on again, and we shall be able to keep things going then by working half time and have the rest to spend in loving one another and worshipping God.”

William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher

"The Risks" in The War Cry (20 December 1884)

Love, God, World, Making love

“Even today, we are still accused of racism. This is a mistake. We know that all interracial groups in South Africa are relationships in which whites are superior, blacks inferior. So as a prelude whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior. Same with blacks. They must be made to realize that they are also human, not inferior.”

Steve Biko (1946–1977) anti-apartheid activist in South Africa

Statement quoted in the Boston Globe (25 October 1977)

“Men and women will never understand each other; my advice is to just stop trying. Just forget it. I know I will never understand women. I will never understand how you can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root…and still be afraid of a spider.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Women, Men, Understanding, Forgetting

“Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced.”

Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress

Roland Barthes, "The Face of Garbo," Mythologies (1957), trans. Annette Lavers [Farrar, Straus, 1986, ISBN 0-374-52150-6], p. 56

“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

God, Making love, Disease, Beauty

“AL GORE: And even though it has gone through this exhaustive 20-year peer review process with the 3,000 best scientists in the world unanimously endorsing it, every national academy of sciences in a developed country on this planet endorsing it, still, based on some radio talk show host or some odd orthogonal argument…”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes from Interviews

World, Science, Country

“These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Quincy Adams (19 January 1780)

Life, Time, Heart, Animals

“The difference lies in the culture of the Filipino people. It is a soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial…”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Lee Kuan Yew
About

People, Forgiveness, Country

“Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at the age of 66, would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical. Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Autobiographical essay (1994)

Age, Making love, Hope, Idea

“Why do the characters in Jane Austen give us a slightly new pleasure each time they come in, as opposed to the merely repetitive pleasure that is caused by a character in Dickens? Why do they combine so well in a conversation, and draw one another out, without seeming to do so, and never perform? The answer to this question can be put in several ways; that, unlike Dickens, she was a real artist, that she never stooped to caricature, etc. But the best reply is that her characters, though smaller than his, are more highly organized. They function all round, and even if her plot made greater demands on them than it does, they would still be adequate.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

E.M. Forster, Aspects of The Novel (1927)

Pleasure, Way, Question, Time

“Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of human education; that the human creature needs first of all to be educated not that he may speak, but that he may have something weighty and valuable to say! If speech is the bank-note of an inward capital of culture, of insight and noble human worth, then speech is precious, and the art of speech shall be honored. But if there is no inward capital; if speech represent no real culture of the mind, but an imaginary culture; no bullion, but the fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such? Alas, alas, said bank-note is then a forged one; passing freely current in the market; but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer, and to all the world, which are in sad truth infallible, and of amount incalculable.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Truth, World, Education, Sadness

“Humor is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind. The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him. Now, among all writers of any real poetic genius, we cannot recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such total deficiency as Schiller. In his whole writings there is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely any attempt that way. His nature was without Humor; and he had too true a feeling to adopt any counterfeit in its stead. Thus no drollery or caricature, still less any barren mockery, which, in the hundred cases are all that we find passing current as Humor, discover themselves in Schiller. His works are full of labored earnestness; he is the gravest of all writers.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Love, Life, Making love, Way

“I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/186/mode/1up p. 186

Happiness, Feeling, Nature, Universe

“Polarity is a fact of life. We cannot always be in one polarity and be healthy. We need movement and we need stillness. The ocean tide must come into shore and it must recede away from shore. Things must intensify and then they must relax.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Life

“What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially. We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform. Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families. Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Children, Education, School, Family

“It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and day care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone. The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills — how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate — essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Children, Education, School, Democracy

“But go ahead and judge DeSean for the company he keeps. While you’re at it, judge me, too, because I still live in Los Angeles, and my family does, too. We didn’t run from where we grew up. We aren’t afraid to be associated with the people who came up with us. We brought some of our money back and started charities and tried to help out a few guys who were with us when we were nobodies. I won’t apologize for that, and I suspect neither will DeSean when he’s back on the field doing what he’s always done: grinding through adversity.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Money, People, Family, Angels

“I wasn’t really shocked or anything. Because of what I saw after the incident after the NFC championship game. You’ve got a lot of racial backlash, and a lot of racist comments that were uncalled for – I can never see a time where racism is called for. So it didn’t shock me as much as it would have had I not experienced that personally, had I not seen those things. Because it showed me that America still had some progress to make. On equality, and understanding that it doesn’t matter what color you are, you treat people as people. And whether a good person or a bad person, you don’t judge them off the color of their skin. You can know a person is a good person or a bad person by who they are, not by what they look like. In that situation, it just seems like a lot of people gave him a lot of flack, well deserved, but you know – I feel like a lot more people were surprised then they should have been.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

About Donald Sterling's racist remarks.
The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

Bad luck, People, Making love, Color

“People want to it to be done, they want that uncomfortable truth to be over with, they want the racism to be done, they want to believe everything is great and hunky-dory. And it’s not. There’s a lot of racism still alive and still active. And it just forced America to rethink it once again. And to really, really understand that racism isn’t gone. We have to actively push it out. And snuff it out.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

People, Truth, Understanding

“All types of conniving methods are still being used to keep Negroes from becoming registered voters. Complex literacy tests are often given, with questions that a Ph. D. in any field or a person with a law degree from any great law university in the world could not answer to the even more difficult question of, how many bubbles do you find on a bar of soap? They tell me that occasionally they will ask that question in Mississippi and Alabama. And there are still millions of Negroes who are not registered to vote because of these methods being used.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

World, Law, Question, Universe

“Even in terms of breaking down the barriers of segregation, there is still much to be done. It may be true, as I just said, figuratively speaking that old man segregation is on his deathbed. But history has proven that social systems have a great last-minute breathing power, and the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. And so segregation is still with us. We still confront it in the South in its glaring and conspicuous forms. We still confront it in every other section of this country in its hidden and subtle forms. But if democracy is to live, segregation must die, for racial segregation is a cancer in the body politic. Segregation must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Health, Democracy, History, Country

“I would not have you believe for one minute tonight that there are not white persons of good will in the South. I am absolutely convinced that there are hundred and thousands, nay millions of white people of good will in the South, but most of them are silent today because of fear — fear of political, social and economic reprisal. God grant that the people of good will will rise up with courage, take over the leadership, and open channels of communication between races, for I think that one of the tragedies of our whole struggle is that the South is still trying to live in monologue, rather than dialogue, and I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because that don’t know each other and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other. And God grant that something will happen to open channels of communication, that something will happen because men of good will will rise to the level of leadership.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Men, God, Hate, People

“We have come to the point where we are able to say to those who will even use violence to block us, we will match you capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet you physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And so throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Love, Children, Making love, Law

“In the end, they’ll be remaking Heartbeat. I’ve said why don’t they put bloody Heartbeat on ITV? Show it again from the beginning. They were brilliant shows for the first six years. It all changed when Nick Berry and Bill Maynard left. At the end we were still getting seven million viewers.”

Derek Fowlds (1937–2020) British actor

Quoted in the Mirror - Yes Minister and Heartbeat star Derek Fowlds dead at 82 https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/breaking-yes-minister-heartbeat-star-21299216?_ga=2.64592495.1773683324.1579285563-54887874.1579285563

Change

“With so many people doing so much writing, great writing is hard to find ... If you succeed in attaining a position that allows you to do something great, if you do something that really is great, and if you realize that it’s great, there’s still one more hurdle: You have to convince others that it’s great. This will require writing.”

Leslie Lamport (1941) American computer scientist

As quoted in [Nathan, David E., Computer scientist Leslie Lamport to grads: If you can’t write, it won’t compute, https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2017/may/commencement-lamport.html, Brandeis University, 17 January 2020, May 21, 2017]

People

“Every day in your lives, you are causing the expansion of yourself as well as the collective with your thought. And yet you still believe not in your perfection but instead in your unworthiness.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Perfection