Quotes about suspect
page 3

“Rama rules as King in Ayodhya. He is born in the Solar race and a descendant of the Sun; he is brave and gentle and firm in fight. By Rama's command his adorable Queen Sita is being brought here into the forest on a chariot, and though she suspects nothing yet, here she will be left abandoned. Unless you comfort her she will drown herself in Ganga and kill as well her unborn sons by Rama.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 5.
Narada to Valmiki
Ramayana

Sun, Fight

“A truly successful life is one filled with friends so it helps if people like being around you. If you suspect they don’t, have a think about how strongly you exhibit ‘likeable’ qualities such as listening well, being trustworthy, kind, generous, compassionate, fun, positive and unselfish. The good news is that you can learn such qualities even if they don’t come naturally to you.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Life, People, Nature, Thinking

“The curse of the middle-aged man was knowing — or believing — that he'd told all he had to tell. Soon as you suspect that, you started wanting something, anything, to prove it wasn't so: and that's where the mistakes started, when the bad things happened.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 20

Age

“Well folks! It su-u-u-ure looks like we're there! Every generation has thought, “It CAN'T get any worse! This MUST be the end of the world!” I sure don't have a crystal ball but I DO have a Bible I trust 100% (it has NEVER been wrong!) and I do have eyes to see and ears to hear what is going on. Based on my observations… I strongly suspect this is (finally and really) the beginning of the end. It is coming like a freight train and cannot be stopped.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 108

World, Training

“A final moral concerns terminology. Why did such serious people take so seriously axioms which now seem so arbitrary? I suspect that they were misled by the pernicious misuse of the word ‘measurement’ in contemporary theory. This word very strongly suggests the ascertaining of some preexisting property of some thing, any instrument involved playing a purely passive role. Quantum experiments are just not like that, as we learned especially from Bohr. The results have to be regarded as the joint product of ‘system’ and ‘apparatus,’ the complete experimental set-up.”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

"On the impossible pilot wave" (1982), included in Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (1987), p. 166

People, Learning

“[…] all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Writing for the court, Korematsu v. United States, 33 U.S. 124 (1944).

“The eulogy of the non-lover in the speech of Lysias … stresses the fact that the non-lover … does not commit extreme acts under the influence of passions. Since he acts from calculation, he never has occasion for remorse. … The non-lover demonstrates his superiority through prudence and objectivity. … We must now observe how these points of superiority correspond to those of “semantically purified” speech, … the kind of speech approaching pure notation in the respect that it communicates abstract intelligence without impulsion. It is a simple instrumentality, showing no affection for the object of its symbolizing and incapable of inducing bias in the hearer. In its ideal conception, it would have less power to move than 2 + 2 = 4, since it is generally admitted that mathematical equations may have the beauty of elegance, and hence are not above suspicion where beauty is suspect. But this neuter language will be an unqualified medium of transmission of meanings from mind to mind, and by virtue of it minds can remain in an unprejudiced relationship to the world and also to other minds. … Instead of passion, it offers the serviceability of objectivity … It distrusts any departure from the literal and prosaic.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” pp. 6-7.
The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)

World, Beauty, Intelligence, Communication

“I suspect it is this Camelot view that leads Miss Croce to be rather unfair to Gene Kelly…I should say the difference starts with their bodies. If you compare Kelly to Astaire, accepting Astaire's debonair style as perfection then, of course, Kelly looks bad. But in popular dance forms, in which movement is not rigidly codified, as it is in ballet, perfection is a romantic myth or a figure of speech, nothing more. Kelly isn't a winged dancer; he's a hoofer and more earthbound. But he has warmth and range as an actor…Astaire's grasshopper lightness was his limitation as an actor - confining him to perennial gosh-oh-gee adolescence;; he was always and only a light comedian and could function only in fairytale vehicles.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Pauline Kael, responding to Croce in her review of Croce's The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, writing in The New Yorker, November 25, 1972, as reproduced in Kael, Pauline. Reeling: Film Writings 1972-1975, Marion Boyars, London - New York, pp. 58-59. ISBN 0-7145-2582-0.

Fairytale, Light, Dance, Perfection

“But if you want to think about something really funny, consider how the titles of tyrants change. We shall suffer no more Emperors, Kings, Czars, Shahs, or Caesars, to lop off our limbs and burn our homes, kiddo, defile our women and bugger our boys; the masses make such appointments now; the masses love tyranny; they demand it; they dance to it; they feel that their hand is forming the First Citizen's Fist; so we shall murder more modestly in future: beneath the banners of Il Duce, Der Führer, the General Secretary or the Party Chairman, the CEO of something. I suspect that the first dictator of this country will be called Coach.”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p.155

Love, Women, Feeling, Home

“Today I think we are beginning to suspect that man is not a tiny cog that doesn’t really make much difference to the running of the huge machine, but rather that there is a much more intimate tie between man and the universe than we heretofore suspected…The physical world is in some deep sense tied to the human being.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

As quoted in by Ken Wilber in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (2001) Shambhala, ISBN 1570627681.

World, Thinking, Sense, Universe

“Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you... remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business... even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought... unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy... What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort... than being able from time to time to stop that chatter...”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Telling Secrets (1991)

Life, God, Business, Thinking

“Stalin was a guy like we are, not only that he considered himself a revolutionary and lived like one, but he was a character in the truest sense of the word… We have finally to let out this psychological wreckage… it is our and my darkest chapter, I know or better to say I suspect it, because I am extremely afraid of certain things that are inside of me. Bartsch and Honka are extreme cases, but in some sense this is as personality inside of oneself… then it easily developed into, yes, the thrill of punching, tending to be a sadistic pleasure.”

Joschka Fischer (1948) German politician

"Stalin war also so ein Typ wie wir, nicht nur, daß er sich auch als Revolutionär verstanden und gelebt hat, sondern er war im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes eben auch ein Typ."
… [Wir müssen] "diese psychische Kaputtheit aus uns endlich rauslassen … Es ist unser und mein dunkelstes Kapitel, ich weiß, oder ahne es besser nur, weil ich da selber wahnsinnig Angst vor bestimmten Sachen in mir habe. Bartsch und Honka sind Extremfälle, aber irgendwo hängt das als Typ in dir drin … dann wurde dann leicht auch, ja, die Lust am Schlagen draus, ein tendenziell sadistisches Vergnügen."
Autonomie, No. 5 (1977)

Pleasure, Guy, Sense, Personality

“I suspect that teaching the history of our subject is less frequent in our institutions than it was. We are getting short-sighted both in looking forward and in looking backward, to our detriment.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 29.

History

“If we assume the pre-Flood world had ideal living conditions, their memory, wisdom, and accumulated knowledge would have been incredible! How much could you learn in 900 years?! Add to that the fact that you can go talk with your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who is still living. You can learn from them and build on that knowledge. Plus, don’t forget that Methuselah could have known Adam for 243 years and learned from him; and Adam walked and talked with God Himself for maybe 100 years! I suspect the pre-Flood knowledge and maybe even technology and inventions would blow our minds today!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 56

Wisdom, God, World, Knowledge

“As a rule, white abolitionists either defended the industrial capitalists or expressed no conscious class loyalty at all. This unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist economic system was evident in the program of the women’s rights movement as well. If most abolitionists viewed slavery as a nasty blemish which needed to be eliminated, most women’s righters viewed male supremacy in a similar manner—as an immoral flaw in their otherwise acceptable society. The leaders of the women’s rights movement did not suspect that the enslavement of Black people in the South, the economic exploitation of Northern workers and the social oppression of women might be systematically related.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Women, Race and Class (1983)

Women, People, Loyalty

“I have recently begun to look for people’s “vicar” nature. It is a technique I happened upon quite by chance, but I think it has a precedent in eastern mysticism. In Buddhism they talk of each of us having a “Buddha nature,” a divine self, the aspect of our total persona that is beyond our materialism and individualism. Well, that’s all well and good. What I’m into is people’s “vicar nature”—what a person would be like if they were a vicar. You can do it on anyone; it doesn’t have to be a vicar either if that isn’t your bag, it could be a rabbi or an imam or whatever. Simply think of someone you know, like, I dunno, Hulk Hogan, and imagine them as a devotional being. When I do, it helps me to see where their material persona intersects with a well-meaning spiritual aspect. Reverend Hogan would be, I suspect, a real fire-and-brimstone guy, spasming and retching in the pulpit but easily moved to tears, perhaps by the plight of a childless couple in his parish. Anyway, let’s not get carried away, it’s just a tool to help me see where a person’s essential self might dwell. Oddly, it’s really easy to do with atheists. I can imagine Richard Dawkins as a vicar in an instant, Calvinist and insistent. Dogmatic and determined, having a stern hearthside chat with a seventeen-year-old boy on the cusp of coming out. My point is that in spite of the lack of any theological title, Bobby Roth is like a priest.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People, Guy, Imagination, Boy

“so you think there’s no validity at all in the subjective?
there may be, there may not. in either case, it should not be used as a basis for an objective truth, which is after all what we are seeking. i have no doubt that many of those who claim to have found god have indeed felt something, but i suspect that the “something” they felt was merely a self-induced mystic experience—akin to a drug trip. witness the great numbers of drug users who claim spiritual insights as a result of their experiences. witness also the evangelists and faith-healers who induce hysteria and frenzy into their audiences so that they might feel “the hand of god” upon them. to them, god is little more than a meaningful “high.””

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 15 (p. 75; Dr. Auberson, then HARLIE)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

God, Truth, Faith, Feeling

“I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family.
Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee.
Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.”

James D. Watson book The Double Helix

Description of Rosalind Franklin, whose data and research were actually key factors in determining the structure of DNA, but who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer, before the importance of her work could be widely recognized and acknowledged. In response to these remarks her mother stated "I would rather she were forgotten than remembered in this way." As quoted in "Rosalind Franklin" at Strange Science : The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology by Michon Scott http://www.strangescience.net/rfranklin.htm The Double Helix (1968)

Life, Women, Men, Money

“Time did a devastating hatchet job on Uri Geller (and others). Time selected those events and circumstances thoroughly discrediting Geller. Time also grouped such meticulous researchers as Charles Tart with highly suspect and careless showmen, tarring all with the same brush. Guilt by association is hardly objective journalism. Nevertheless most "nonordinary" phenomena are subjective and not amenable to cultural "prediction and control." This has been one issue of my book. Should Geller-type material become fully acceptable within such channels of the culture such as Time, we would know that the cultural force would have absorbed, and not destroyed, the Crack-sign value of such phenomena. When those working in the field of "nonordinary" phenomena stop trying to prove to the Establishment, they will make a great leap forward. Anonymity is the direction.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce (1926–2016) American writer

Source: Exploring the Crack In the Cosmic Egg (1974), p. 146

Books, Time

“As far as “plot” goes, as I get older I more and more suspect that “plot” is really being used, in the many incarnations of this argument, as a placeholder for a whole cloud of qualities found (or not found) in certain narratives, some of which actually constitute “plot” and many of which do not. What first led me to suspect this is the fact that many of the sternest exponents of “I want novels to have plots, dammit” are also demonstrably fans of, for instance, quite a few Robert A. Heinlein novels whose plots can barely be detected even by advanced scientific equipment. (Not just later Heinlein, either; go back and look at Beyond This Horizon). As it happens, I like some of those books, too, and what I learn from them, and from thousands of other books, is that what matters isn’t the presence of a carefully-engineered, structurally sound “plot.” What matters is whether a book entrances us into reading it or forces us to decode it — and “plot” is just one of several methods of getting us into the reading trance. It’s a good method. It’s not the only one.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden (1959) American science fiction editor, fanzine publisher, essayist, reviewer, anthologist, and teacher

"Oh No Lev Grossman No", in Making Light (30 August 2009)

Books, Learning, Reading

“We have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite "Natura non facit saltum." We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, Criticisms on "The Origin of the Species" (1864)

Way, Appearance

“Turn up the TV. No one listening will suspect,
even your mother won't detect it,
no your father won't know.
they think that I've got no respect
but everything means less than zero.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Less Than Zero
Song lyrics, My Aim Is True (1977)

Thinking

“Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.”

Helen Garner (1942) Australian author

In the title story Postcards from Surfers.
Garner describing her mother.
Postcards from Surfers (1985)

“In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions "against" rather than revolutions "for"… On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to [by both] the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 111

Time

“If supersymmetry plays the role in physics that we suspect it does, then it is very likely to be discovered by the next generation of particle accelerators, either at Fermilab… or at CERN… Discovery of supersymmetry would be one of the real milestones in physics, made even more exciting by its close links to still more ambitious theoretical ideas. Indeed, supersymmetry is one of the basic requirements of "string theory," which is the framework in which theoretical physicists have had some success in unifying gravity with the rest of the elementary particle forces. Discovery of supersymmetry would would certainly give string theory an enormous boost.”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

Foreward, written June 30, 1999, to Supersymmetry: Unveiling the Ultimate Laws of Nature (2000) by Gordon Kane

Idea, Success

“I suspect we would be wise,” he said without looking up, “to avoid declaring what God will or will not allow.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 12 (p. 194)

God

“I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System” (2011)

Education, Teachers

“Suspecting that we would be accused of apologetics for the Khmer Rouge, Chomsky and I went to some pains to point out Khmer Rouge crimes and to stress that our purpose was to emphasize the discrepancy between available facts and media claims and to lay bare what we saw to be a propaganda campaign of selective indignation and benevolence. This effort was futile. With such a powerful propaganda bandwagon underway, from the very beginning the mass media were closed to oppositional voices on the issue, and any scepticism, even identification of outright lies, was treated with hostility and tabbed apologetics for the Khmer Rouge. Our crime was the very act of criticizing the workings of the propaganda system and its relation to US power and policy, instead of focusing attention on approved villainy, which could be assailed violently and ignorantly, without penalty. The issue was framed as a simple one: those for and against Pol Pot. […] I would estimate with some confidence that over 90 percent of the journalists who mentioned Chomsky's name in connection with Cambodia never looked at his original writings on the subject, but merely regurgitated a quickly adopted line. The critics who helped formulate the line also could hardly be bothered looking at the actual writings; the method was almost invariably the use of a few selected quotations taken out of context and embedded in a mass of sarcastic and violent denunciation.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Herman, “Pol Pot, Faurisson, and the Process of Derogation”, in Otero, Ed. (1994), Noam Chomsky: Critical Assessments, pp. 598-615.
1990s

Pain, Hostility, Penalty, Confidence

“I have finally realized how rarely you will find a flawless woman, one who is simply perfect. No doubt there are many who seem quite promising, write a flowing hand, give you back a perfectly acceptable poem, and all in all do credit enough to the rank they have to uphold, but you know, if you insist on any particular quality, you seldom find one who will do. Each one is all too pleased with her own accomplishments, runs others down, and so on. While a girl is under the eye of her adoring parents and living a sheltered life bright with future promise, it seems men have only to hear of some little talent of hers to be attracted. As long as she is pretty and innocent, and young enough to have nothing else on her mind, she may well put her heart into learning a pastime that she has seen others enjoy, and in fact she may become quite good at it. And when those who know her disguise her weaknesses and advertise whatever passable qualities she may have so as to present them in the best light, how could anyone think ill of her, having no reason to suspect her of being other than she seems? But when you look further to see whether it is all true, I am sure you can only end up disappointed.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Spoken by Tō no Chūjō in Ch. 2: The Broom Tree (trans. Royall Tyler)
Tale of Genji

Life, Men, Disappointment, Girl

“Suppose, deep down, you suspect that you are dull, and your public works are a form of vengeance. You talk a good poem, and think by numbers. Once upon a time, you were interesting; then Mother died and you had to give it up.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"The Power Party" (p. 62)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Thinking, Time

“Although wanting to be an individual, the male is scared of anything about him that's the slightest bit different from other men; it causes him to suspect he's not really a "Man," that he's passive and totally sexual, a highly upsetting suspicion. If other men are A and he's not, he must be not a man; he must be a fag. So he tries to affirm his "Manhood" by being like all the other men. Differentness in other men, as well as in himself, threatens him; it means they're fags, who he must, at all costs, avoid, so he tries to ensure that all other men conform.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8.

Men

“There is not a canvas of that time that does not foreshadow the overthrow of the foundations on which the human race thought itself firmly established, where it felt itself secure. At the moment when the Ballets Russes were at their height, when the Neo-Impressionists and Fauves had dispensed with the drawing style of the Renaissance because it could not contain the purity of the colour - these humbly painted, angular, grey, ascetic pictures were, really, an unwelcome sight. It was not any upheaval of a geological nature that they prefigured, but a cataclysm in the human order. No tremor of the earth was registered, but a tremor of the spirit that disturbed the intellect of civilised man, too long the slave of his immobilised senses. At last he was beginning to suspect that something dangerous was approaching.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

after 1920, The Epic, From immobile form to mobile form (1925)

Nature, Sense, Time, Drawing

““There could be an end to all this, when the Lords of the Higher Worlds and all the machinery of cosmic mystery shall be no more. And perhaps that is why they fear mortals so much. The secret of their destruction, I suspect, lies in us, though we have yet to realize our own power.”
“And do you have a hint of what that power may be, Eternal Champion?” said Alisaard.
I smiled. “I think it is simply the power to conceive of a multiverse which has no need of the supernatural, which, indeed, could abolish it if so desired!””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 3, Chapter 2 (p. 646)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Secret, World, Fear, Smile

“At this point in history when all things which concern man and the structure and elements of history itself are suddenly revealed to us in a new light, it behooves us in our scientific thinking to become masters of the situation, for it is not inconceivable that sooner than we suspect, as has often been the case before in history, this vision may disappear, the opportunity may be lost, and the world will once again present a static, uniform, and inflexible countenance.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

World, History, Thinking, Light

“Rod privately suspected the Scots studied their speech off duty so they’d be unintelligible to the rest of humanity.”

Larry Niven book The Mote in God's Eye

Source: The Mote in God's Eye (1974), Chapter 2 “The Passengers” (p. 15)

Study

“Certain moments remain in the mind with such force and clearness that one suspects they must be invented; that they are not held in the memory but generated out of the imagination.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

Imagination, Memory

“Set up shelter and cleaned up… to let them know I’m still alive. Got text saying I’m a suspect. Saw patrol. Not spotted. They stuck to the trails. Listened to radio. News media calling me a ‘survivalist.’ Ha! Catchy phrase I guess. Shelter-in-place (ordered) by spooked cops.”

Eric Frein (1983) American fugitive

Diary entry (17 September 2014), as quoted in "‘Literally hunting humans’: Eric Frein, sniper who killed Pa. trooper, sentenced to death" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/27/murder-in-his-heart-eric-frein-sniper-killer-of-pa-trooper-sentenced-to-death/?utm_term=.1fa45b04fbf7 (27 April 2017), by Fred Barbash, The Washington Post Diary (September 2014)

“In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"William Dean Howells" (1983)
1980s, At Home (1988)

Art

“Egmont:
The Egmont of yon city — he is proud,
And cold, and stern, and sorrowful. He keeps
His counsel to himself. He wears a brow
That is a smiling shadow to his heart :
Perplexed with seeming mirth, that shroudeth care.
Exalted by a giddy populace,
That know not what they laud, or what they seek.
Moving 'mid those who understand him not;
Whom he has naught in common with : and worn
By furious guarding 'gainst familiar friends
Who seem, yet are not. Watched, suspected, feared;
Wearied with labour, which hath neither end
Nor yet reward; but only distant hope.
Such is the Egmont of the field and state.
But thine beloved : he is happy, frank,
Open, and known to that most dear of hearts —
Which he knows, too, and trusts it as his own.
Calm, deeply joyful; such is Egmont now.”

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

The London Literary Gazette (28th February 1835)
Translations, From the German

Fear, Smile, Hope, Understanding

“The problem may be briefly stated: What does "median mortality of eight months" signify in our vernacular? I suspect that most people, without training in statistics, would read such a statement as "I will probably be dead in eight months" - the very conclusion that must be avoided, since it isn't so, and since attitude matters so much.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

The Median Isn't the Message (1985)

People, Problem, Reading, Training

“The military mind tends to be conservative, realistic and historical. The civilian mind tends to be liberal, idealistic and Utopian. Journalists, obviously, are civilians, and they tend to distrust, and to suspect, the military’s motives.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Rumsfeld’s New Spy Unit (2002)

Motivation

“Investigators identified 29 members of the 173rd Airborne as suspects in confirmed cases of torture. Fifteen of them admitted the acts. Yet only three were punished, records show. They received fines or reductions in rank. None served any prison time.”

Nick Turse (1975) American writer

A Tortured Past http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-vietnam20aug20-story.html#page=1, August 2006

Time

“I understand how it was possible for Spinoza to find deep and sustained happiness when he was excommunicated, poor, despised and suspected alike by Jew and Christian; not that the kind world of men ever treated me so, but that his isolation from the universe of sensuous joys is somewhat analogous to mine. He loved the good for its own sake. Like many great spirits he accepted his place in the world, and confided himself childlike to a higher power, believing that it worked through his hands and predominated in his being. He trusted implicitly, and that is what I do. Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, 'the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Love, Men, God, World

“I suspect that democracy is not viable in a technologically advanced society. Free people wield too much ability to destroy.”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 45: Respawning, Character: Sobel

People, Democracy

“The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do.”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)

“There are two injustices which revolt Me! First, that which makes the people believe that those responsible for the [Franco-Khmer] treaty and who continue to have dealings with the French are traitors. Secondly, that which holds that… all who do not openly insult and struggle against the French are traitors… For Myself, I refuse [this logic]… If I am a traitor, let the Crown Council permit Me to abdicate!… I can no longer stand by and watch My country drown and My people die… Over these last few months we have no longer dared look each other in the face. In our offices and schools, everywhere people are discussing politics- suspecting each other; hatching plots; promoting this person, bringing down that one, pushing the third aside; doing no constructive work while, in the country at large, killing, banditry and murder hold sway. Chaos reigns, the established order has ceased to exist… The military and the police… no longer know where their duty lies. The Issaraks are told that they are dying for Cambodia, and so are our soldiers dying in battle against them… Each day threatens [to engulf us in] a veritable civil war… This is how things now stand gentlemen. The time has come for the Nation to make clear whether it desires to follow [the way of the rebels], or to continue in the path that I have traced.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Speech to the Council of the Throne (June 4, 1952), as quoted in Philip Short (2004) Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, page 76.
Speeches

War, People, School, Way

“If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader really isn't sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend that they're amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the “form of funny,” which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness.”

Chuck Klosterman Eating the Dinosaur

Eating the Dinosaur (2009)

Age, Failure, Laughter, Chance

“Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 4

Fate, Chance

“I never heard [my parents] talk between themselves about Palestine or Zionism, and I suspected they had no strong convictions on the subject, at least until after the war, when the horror of the Holocaust made them feel there should be a “National Home.” I felt they were bullied by the organizers of these meetings, and by the gangsterlike evangelists who would pound at the front door and demand large sums for yeshivas or “schools in Israel.” My parents, clearheaded and independent in most other ways, seemed to become soft and helpless in the face of these demands, perhaps driven by a sense of obligation or anxiety. My own feelings […] were passionately negative: I came to hate Zionism and evangelism and politicking of every sort, which I regarded as noisy and intrusive and bullying.”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), p. 171

Hate, War, School, Way

“We can say to the other revolutionaries: you are right to be dissatisfied with this society with its erroneous and unjust ways, but how can you change everything straightaway with your own hands? Do you want to destroy the persons whom you see as adversaries, and even those who you suspect of not being revolutionary?
Do you want the revolution to go forward with massacres, torture, the absolute power of a group, which prevents other people from speaking, informing themselves or criticizing or even living? We want a society founded on love and shall we start with cultivating and stimulating hatred? We want a free society and should we increase tyranny and absolutism? We want a good and clean end and should we use dirty and terrible means?”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Love, People, Way, Change

“Anna’s reaction is more complex than you might imagine, and it’s at such a moment you appreciate the woman in the writer-director’s chair. Women, I suspect, are more likely than men to view sex from the over-all perspective of what we may call their lives. In a country like Saudi Arabia, whose citizens express discomfort about men and women even attending movies together, I have little doubt which gender is more concerned.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/humpday-2009 of Humpday (22 July 2009) Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Women, Men, Sex, Imagination

“There are few, however, who devote thought and study to perfection of Divine service—to love, fear, communion and all of the other aspects of saintliness. It is not that they consider this knowledge unessential; if questioned each one will maintain that it is of paramount importance and that one who is not clearly versed in it cannot be deemed truly wise. Their failure to devote more attention to it stems rather from its being so manifest and so obvious to them that they see no need for spending much time upon it. Consequently, this study and the reading of works of this kind have been left to those of a not too sensitive, almost dull intelligence. These you will see immersed in the study of saintliness, not stirring from it. It has reached the stage that when one sees another engaging in saintly conduct, he cannot help but suspect him of dullwittedness.”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Introduction

Love, Fear, Intelligence, Failure

“The fighting in western Bosnia intensified as the cease-fire approached. (…) Facing the end of the fighting, the Croats and the Bosnians finally buried their differences, if only momentarily, and took Sanski Most and several other smaller towns. But Prijedor still eluded them. For reasons we never fully undestood, they did not capture this important town, a famous symbol of ethnic cleansing.* (*In March 1997, I attended a showing at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York of a powerful documentary film, Calling the ghosts, that recounted the brual treatmen two Bosnian women from Prijedor had suffered during their incarceration at the notorious Omarska prison camp. Following the film, the two women angrily asked me why they were still unable to return to their hometown. I told them we'd repeatedly encouraged an assault on Prijedor. They were stonished; they said General Dudakovic, the Bosnian commander, had told them personally that "Holbrooke would not let us capture Prijedor and Bosanski Novi". I subsequently learned that this story was widely believed in the region. This revisionism was not surprising; it absolved Dudakovic and his associates of responsibility for the failure to take Prijedor. I suspect the truth is that after the disaster at the Una River the Croatians did not want to fight for a town the would have to turn over to the Muslims - and the Bosnians could not capture it unaided.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 206

Women, Truth, Failure, Suffering

“I have long had a theory that the popularity of Christianity has always depended on its appeal to the sadism of its adherents. The exceptional should be crucified, saith Society; and somehow everyone suspects (in spite of all arguments to the contrary) that if there is a God, he may be exceptional in some way. So the figure of Christ crucified becomes the figure of the dangerous exceptional alien—suitably defeated. 'Only a suffering God can help', said Bonhoeffer, licking his lips.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

God, Way, Suffering, Help

“I am not thinking of those shining precepts which are the registered property of every school; that is to say — learn as much by writing as by reading; be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites; keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing; be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause of the weakness of the good; never be surprised by the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton; judge talent at its best and character at its worst; suspect power more than vice, and study problems in preference to periods.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Many of these precepts which he quotes here have been quoted as originating with Lord Acton.
The Study of History (1895)

Men, Books, School, Idea

“He who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. For one thing is needful: to give style to one’s character. This art is practised by him who, with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law. Only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to others. For the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others. They absorb poison from everything, from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony. Such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips; the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of life; and their hearts ever burn with envy of those who have become well [harmonious] and can therefore enjoy life.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 26

Life, People, Law, Art

“Naqi suspected that the ability to turn drunkenness on and off like a switch must be one of the most hallowed of diplomatic skills.”

Alastair Reynolds book Diamond Dogs

Turquoise Days, Chapter 2 (p. 237)
Short fiction, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)

“I suspect in Lenin's works there's everything, if you search well.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: magazine Magazyn Trybuny, 20 April 2002

“{{Smallcaps|i suspect that the emotional complex known as love is a several-sided figure. the achievement of it requires several necessary conditions. first: mutual attraction, physical and mental. we have already discussed this: you like her looks, she likes yours. you like her personality, she likes yours.
Second,}} HARLIE continued, {{Smallcaps|mutual rapport. you understand her, she understands you. physical rapport included. (part of this is mutual tolerance; the rapport guarantees that.)
third: mutual need, both intellectual and emotional. it is not always enough to want each other. the need must also be there. She must complement you and vice versa. this is one of the most important facets of the love relationship. if the need element is lacking, when the want wears thin, then there is no reason for the relationship to continue. but if the want wanes and the need is still strong, then the latter will reinforce the former.}}”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 31 (p. 186; HARLIE)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

Love, Understanding, Strong, Parting

“Paramount among such events is the Jewish holocaust during World War II, which Zionists used for propagandistic purposes to assert their "right" to Palestine to which they had laid their suspect colonial claim half a century earlier. In appropriating the holocaust and its victims, Zionism and Israel asserted that any acknowledgment of the holocaust is an acknowledgment of Israel's "right to exist," and conversely that any attempt to deny Israel its alleged right to exist was perforce a denial of the holocaust.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in "Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?", Journal of Palestine Studies, 2000
"Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?"

War, World

“The standard of judgment is no longer results but the flickering image of seriousness, skillfully crafted to squeeze into 30 seconds on the nightly news. In this world, emotion has become suspect - the accepted style is smooth, antiseptic and passionless.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

On the national debate, Speech http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/10/us/biden-joins-campaign-for-the-presidency.html announcing entry into 1988 presidential race, Wilmington, Delaware (June 10, 1987) 1980s

World

“But that leads me to my third hard truth: something happens to people in law enforcement. Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts. For example, criminal suspects routinely lie about their guilt, and nearly everybody we charge is guilty. That makes it easy for some folks in law enforcement to assume that everybody is lying and that no suspect, regardless of their race, could be innocent. Easy, but wrong.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People, Truth, Lie, Law

“Great Britain is certainly suspect to Americans. They cannot make head or tail of her. She is a stuck-up old girl who owes a lot of money - an odd thing for such a highly respectable old lady to do. She is rather flighty, which is alarming in one so old - she never seems quite serious, that is - goes into giggles all of a sudden, or smiles enigmatically, if politely. She seems to the average American slightly phoney. Let us face up to that. She has many habits which baffle and put one on one's guard - the curious way she has of speaking English with a foreign accent, for instance. Then she must be the most quarrelsome old dame which ever stepped: always - umbrella in hand - getting into scraps with her neighbours, and spitting at them over the garden wall.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

The Hitler Cult (Dent, 1949)

Money, Smile, Way, Girl

“How many wicked intentions climb aboard a pure and innocent phrase, after it is already on its way! It is enough to make one suspect that lying is, many a time, as involuntary as breathing.”

Machado de Assis book Dom Casmurro

Quantas intenções viciosas há assim que embarcam, a meio caminho, numa frase inocente e pura! Chega a fazer suspeitar que a mentira é muita vez tão involuntária como a transpiração.
Source: Dom Casmurro (1899), Ch. 41, p. 100.

Way, Lying, Time

“The essential difference between est and Scientology is two-fold. The first has to do with Scientology’s emphasis on survival and its idea that the purpose of life is survival. est sees the purpose of life as wholeness or completion – truth – not survival…The other main difference between est and Scientology lies in the treatment of knowing. Ron Hubbard seems to have no difficulty in codifying the truth and in urging people to believe it. But I suspect all codifications, particularly my own. In presenting my own ideas, I emphasize their epistemological context. I hold them as pointers to the truth, not as the truth itself. I don’t think anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 157, 0-517-53502-5]

Life, People, Truth, Lie

“The successful scientist and the raving crank are separated by the quality of their inspirations. But I suspect that this amounts, in practice, to a difference, not so much in ability to notice analogies as in ability to reject foolish analogies and pursue helpful ones.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 8 “Explosions and Spirals” (pp. 195–196)

Success, Help

“We live in anti-liberal times, when individual choice is highly suspect. The driving legislative ethos is toward making all actions required or forbidden, with less and less room for human volition. Simply put, we no longer trust the idea of freedom. We can't even imagine how it would work. What a distance we have traveled from the Age of Reason to our own times.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

As quoted in "The Freedom of Association" http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/freedom-of-association145.html (1 June 2010). 2010s

Age, Travel, Imagination, Idea

“It bothers a lot of people, but like you said, it's nobody's business, it came from the Judeo-Christian ethos, especially Saint Paul the bastard, but he was complaining about youngsters who were not really that way, they did it for money, everybody suspects us or knows but nobody says anything about it.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Stein's comment about homosexuality and homophobia, from a conversation with Samuel Steward recounted in Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1977)

Money, People, Way, Business

“The fact that Councillor Wong-Tam published the letter’s return address rather than wait for police to review the matter, makes me suspect that either she is complicit in the hoax, or she saw an opportunity to use it for political theatre.”

James Sears (1963) Canadian pickup artist, physician, politician and National Socialist

19 April 2017 https://torontoist.com/2017/04/controversial-publisher-ward-news-send-homophobic-hate-mail-councillor-wong-tam/

Waiting

“Nigel Barton (On TV): I feel I don't belong here, that's my trouble.
Interviewer (on TV): Well, where do you belong? At home?
Harry Barton: Of course!
Nigel Barton (on TV): No, I'm afraid I don't. Now it hurts to say this, of course, but it's the truth. Back at home, in the village, in the workingmen's club, with people I went to school with, I'm so much on the defensive, you see. They suspect me of making qualitative judgments about their environment, you understand, but it's not that I wish to do so. Yet I even find my own father looking at me oddly some times, waiting to pounce on some remark, some expression in my face, watching me like a hawk. I don't feel at home in either place. I don't belong. It's a tightrope between two different worlds, and I'm walking it.
Harry Barton: You're a bloody liar, Nigel!”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Stand up, Nigel Barton (1965)

People, Truth, World, School

“I suspect you are intent upon some sort of revenge, in response to this dreadful tragedy?’
‘And?’ I said.
‘Let me counsel you. In moments such as this, we are inclined to allow the animal aspect of our natures to take control. It is a mistake. … Because revenge can destroy a man as surely as the plague. It seems like a god, so pure and true, and full of its sense of justice and entitlement. But it is truly a monster. It feeds perpetually upon its own pain, and upon any pain it can find. And it can never be satisfied until everything has been destroyed utterly.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

Ch 11
The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011)

God, Pain, Justice, Revenge

“I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

John Murray Gibbon, Pagan Love (1922), ch. xiv
Misattributed

Success, Dead

“Man, he suspected, had a particular genius for complicating things, for creating social hurdles that one must leap or be thought lacking.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 8 (p. 100)

“Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul—nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was not fiercer than his hatred of that.”

Clive Staples Lewis book That Hideous Strength

Source: That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 16 : Banquet at Belbury, section 6

Death, Hate, World, Soul

“[W]e've got to break this equation of "I'm right, you're evil. So everything you do is suspect, everything you say is a lie, your facts are fake news." Because that is an acid on politics. We've got to get rid of that.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

Interview with Elex Michaelson https://www.facebook.com/ElexMichaelson/videos/318261475405835/ (2018) 2010s, 2018

Lie, Evil

“Your iron industry is dead; dead as mutton. Your coal industries, which depend greatly upon the iron industries, are languishing. Your silk industry is dead, assassinated by the foreigner. Your woollen industry is in articulo mortis, gasping, struggling. Your cotton industry is seriously sick. The shipbuilding industry, which held out longest of all, is come to a standstill. Turn your eyes where you like, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease. The self-satisfied Radical philosophers will tell you it is nothing; they point to the great volume of British trade. Yes, the volume of British trade is still large, but it is a volume which is no longer profitable; it is working and struggling. So do the muscles and nerves of the body of a man who has been hanged twitch and work violently for a short time after the operation. But death is there all the same, life has utterly departed, and suddenly comes the rigot mortis…But what has produced this state of things? Free imports? I am not sure; I should like an inquiry; but I suspect free imports of the murder of our industries much in the same way as if I found a man standing over a corpse and plunging his knife into it I should suspect that man of homicide, and I should recommend a coroner's inquest and a trial by jury…”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Speech in Blackpool (24 January 1884), quoted in Robert Rhodes James, Lord Randolph Churchill (London: Phoenix, 1994), p. 137

Life, Death, Disease, Way

“Because of the information discussed on page nine, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

The Snicket File, page 13
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

“It is a question of the systematic and interpretive organization of the sensational, scattered and narcissist surrealist experimental material, - that is to say, of everyday surrealist events:, br>nocturnal pollution, false recollection, dream, diurnal fantasy, the concrete transformation of nocturnal phosphene into a hypnagogic image or of "waking phosphene" into an objective image, - the nutritive caprice, - inter-uterine claims, - anamorphic hysteria, - the voluntary retention of the urine, - the involuntary retention of insomnia - the fortuitous image of exclusively exhibitionist tendency, -the incomplete action, - the frantic manner, - the regional sneeze, the anal wheelbarrow, the minimal mistake, the liliputian malaise, the super-normal physiological state, - the picture one leaves off painting, that which one paints, the territorial ringing of the telephone, "the deranging image", etc., etc.,
all these things, I say, and a thousand other instantaneous or successive sollicitations, revealing a minimum of irrational intentionalety or, on the contrary, a minimum of suspect phenomenal nullity, are associated, by the mechanisms of paranoiac-critical activity, in an indestructible delirious-interpretive system of political problems, paralytic images, more or less mammiferous questions, playing the role of the obsessing idea.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', pp. 15-16

Dreams, Idea, Question, Problem

“And it is the notions of reality and unreality themselves which finally become suspect when either one is mirrored in art, much less when both are mirrored together.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 3, “Of Markets, Maps, Cellars, and Cisterns” (p. 61)

Art, Reality

“I have applied for a pass and I am going to travel through Western Europe for 5 days. [I] start in Cologne and will probably end in Paris. Who cares. In Cologne there is a large exhibition of German painters [especially Die Brücke-artists]. Jan W. [= Jan Wiegers, who knew Kirchner very well since 1920] has been there and animated so much that I'm going there for a while.... it seems that Jan wants to come with me. He was so enthusiastic that I suspect to be able to note him as my traveling companion.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Ik heb een pas aangevraagd en ga West-Europa in 5 dagen afreizen. Begin in Keulen en eindig vermoedelijk in Parijs. Wie doet je wat. In Keulen is een groote tentoonstelling van Duitse schilders [met name van Die Brücke]. Jan W. [= nl:Jan Wiegers] is er geweest en animeerde zoodanig dat ik er even heen ga.. ..'t schijnt dat Jan met me mee wil. Hij was zo enthousiast dat ik vermoed hem als reisgezel te kunnen noteren.
Quote van Werkman, in his letter to Cor Spruit, 14 August, 1929; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 110
After this trip Werkman made a series of prints from the Paris' metro: 'D-67' and 'D-69'
1920's

Travel, Animals

“Muslims in India have often sought shelter under Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code (I. P. C.) for preventing every public discussion of their creed in general and of their prophet in particular.1 Quite a few publications which examine critically the sayings and doings of the Prophet or other idolized personalities of Islam, have been proscribed under Section 95 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr. P. C.) as a result of pressure exerted by vociferous, very often violent Muslim protests. Little did they suspect that the same provisions of the law could be invoked for seeking a ban on their holy book, the Quran. The credit for this turning of tables goes to Chandmal Chopra of Calcutta.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Books, Law, Personality

“Bujak spoke of Einstein as if he were God's literary critic, God being a poet. I, more stolidly, tend to suspect that God is a novelist — a garrulous and deeply unwholesome one too.”

Martin Amis book Einstein's Monsters

"Bujak and the Strong Force"
Einstein's Monsters (1987)

God

“Earlier this year we went skiing and I was in a shop, paying a bill and there was a woman standing there whom I knew slightly. I was waiting for my bill and she was buying something, a tea strainer. Quite suddenly she said to me, 'Where was your Father killed?'. I was very surprised and blurted out 'Oh Anzio'. Now this is a woman of about my age, so she's 40-ish. She said, 'My Father was killed in the war'. Apparently somebody lent her a copy of 'The Final Cut' and she had listened to the whole thing and she had found it very moving. In fact she said it had moved her to tears. She told me this, standing in the shop, with some effort I suspect, and I remember thinking: That's enough really. It doesn't matter if the Americans don't buy it.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Karl Dallas Interview, 1984
Music

War, Age, Thinking, Tear

“The idea that lack of paternal guidance can explain today's masculinity crisis doesn't make sense. I suspect rather that underneath the sons' charge that their fathers did not teach them how to be men lies another, unadmitted complaint — that their fathers taught them only too well how to be men, and they are choking on the lesson. These men, as boys, faced the age-old tradeoff: If you undergo the painful process of renouncing the "feminine" aspects of your humanity and follow your father into manhood (and what choice do you have, really?) you will share in the spoils of the superior half of the race. Now, as men, they find that the spoils are far more meager than expected. No wonder they feel betrayed.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"How Now, Iron Johns?", The Nation (13 December 1999) http://www.thenation.com/article/how-now-iron-johns/

Men, Pain, Age, Feeling

“To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, Spiritualism and Occultism

People, Imagination, Reality, Parting

“He now suspected that every human being who knew how high-frequency traders made money was making too much money doing it to stop and explain what was going on.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 55

Money

“1048. Call your Husband Cuckold in Jest and he'll ne'er suspect you.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“A large number of suspects, both men and women, escaped martial law for lack of any shred of evidence against them on which a court-martial could convict. So they began setting them free in groups, according to their birth-place. But half-way, the car-load would be emptied into a ditch.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.105

Women, Men, Law, Cars

“But now we come upon another objection, which I judge will be the last you can raise. You will say, I suspect, that this world of freedom, self-equipped for sin, is indeed a world which "lieth in wickedness," that in truth there is no real hope of good in it: it is a world of inherent and inexpugnable wrong, and not only damnable, but in fact already damned.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.372

Truth, World, Hope, Freedom

“Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.
That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 25 (p. 67)

Pain, People, Way, Childhood

“I typically find myself wanting to verify every single fact or idea that I hadn't heard of before, and say either "hold on, I need to think about that for a few minutes" or "let me check that on Google/Wikipedia". In actual conversation I'd suppress this because I suspect the other person will quickly find it extremely annoying. I just think to myself "I'll try to remember what he's saying and check it out later", but of course I don't have such a good memory.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d9CcQ24ukbL8WcMpB/how-to-always-have-interesting-conversations#HK9pw3RnReS5x9bPa on LessWrong, June 2010

Idea, Thinking, Memory, Personality

“We are confident that the normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations can become the greatest input of the recent decades in achieving peace and stability in the South Caucasus. With this vision, we have agreed to move forward without any preconditions, not making our relations contingent upon Turkey’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide. However, if, as many suspect, it is proven that Turkey’s goal is to protract, rather than to normalize relations, we will have to discontinue the process.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

Speech by President Serzh Sargsyan in the Chatham House British Royal Institute of International Affairs http://www.president.am/events/news/eng/?search=Chatham+House&id=898 (February 10, 2010)

Peace, Confidence

“Humanitarianism … occurs where a powerful group seeks to curb the activities of another group in their own better interests. They define them as a social problem and demands that action be taken to ameliorate their situation. This is complicated in the case of marihuana smoking, in so far as those individuals who make up the social problem would deny that any real problem exists at all.
I would argue that the humanitarian motive is exceedingly suspect; for it is often—though not necessarily—a rationalization behind which is concealed either a conflict of interests or moral indignation. For example Alex Comfort in The Anxiety Makers has charted the way in which the medical profession have repeatedly translated their moral indignation over certain ‘abuses’ into a clinically backed humanitarianism. For example, masturbation was once seen as causing psychosis, listlessness and impotence, and various barbaric clinical devices were evolved to prevent young people from touching their genital organs.”

Jock Young (1942–2013) British sociologist and criminologist

“The role of the police as amplifiers of deviancy,” Images of Deviance (1971), p. 31

People, Way, Motivation, Problem

“I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

He sospechado alguna vez que la única cosa sin misterio es la felicidad, porque se justifica por sí sola.
"Unworthy", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Variant: I have thought from time to time that the only thing without mystery is happiness, since it justifies itself.

Happiness

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. … I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 130-132.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Death, God, Fear, Exercises

“There're so many young guys, you know — young Americans and, yes, young men everywhere — a whole generation of people younger than me who have grown up feeling inadequate as men because they haven't been able to fight in a war and find out whether they are brave or not. Because it is in an effort to prove this bravery that we fight — in wars or in bars — whereas if a man were truly brave he wouldn't have to be always proving it to himself. So therefore I am forced to consider bravery suspect, and ridiculous, and dangerous. Because if there are enough young men like that who feel strongly enough about it, they can almost bring on a war, even when none of them want it, and are in fact struggling against having one. (And as far as modern war is concerned I am a pacifist. Hell, it isn't even war anymore, as far as that goes. It's an industry, a big business complex.) And it's a ridiculous thing because this bravery myth is something those young men should be able to laugh at. Of course the older men like me, their big brothers, and uncles, and maybe even their fathers, we don't help them any. Even those of us who don't openly brag. Because all the time we are talking about how scared we were in the war, we are implying tacitly that we were brave enough to stay. Whereas in actual fact we stayed because we were afraid of being laughed at, or thrown in jail, or shot, as far as that goes.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

The Paris Review interview (1958)

Men, War, People, Guy

“Travers's Mary Poppins was a natural phenomena, ancient as mountain ranges, on first-name terms with the primal powers of the universe, adored and respected by everything that saw the world as it was. And she was a mystery. … philosophically, I suspect now, the universe of Mary Poppins underpins all my writing …”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

In his Foreword to Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins: The Governess as Provocateur (2007) by Giorgia Grilli, p. xiii

World, Mountain, Nature, Universe

“Freud, Galileo and Darwin told us, at different times and in different ways, that we are not the center of the universe; that we do not have control; that we do not fully understand our motivations; that we are not all that special. They did not have an easy time of it—for each society wants to believe that it can exercise control over its own destiny and over others. I suspect their findings apply not just to science or personal behavior, but to the way power and leverage can be exercised by nation states. Yours, I suspect, will be the first generation which will have to achieve results with neither military nor economic predominance—no matter where you sit.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

Informal remarks, University of Pennsylvania Law School. http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/2000s/Selected-from-Remarks-Penn-Law-092206.html, 2006

Way, Behavior, Exercises, Motivation

“I’ve always suspected that Judas was the most faithful of the apostles, and that his betrayal of Jesus was not a betrayal at all, simply a test to prove that Christ could not be betrayed. The way I see it, Judas hoped and expected that Christ would have worked some kind of miracle and turned away those soldiers when they came for him. Or perhaps he would not die on the cross. Or perhaps—well, never mind. In any case, Jesus didn’t do any of these things, probably because he was not capable of it. You see, I’ve also always believed that Christ was not the son of God, but just a very very good man, and that he had no supernatural powers at all, just the abilities of any normal human being. When he died, that’s when Judas realized that he had not been testing God at all—he’d been betraying a human being, perhaps the best human being. Judas’s mistake was in wanting too much to believe in the powers of Christ. He wanted Christ to demonstrate to everyone that he was the son of God, and he believed his Christ could do it—only his Christ wasn’t the son of God and couldn’t do it, and he died. You see, it was Christ who betrayed Judas—by promising what he couldn’t deliver. And Judas realized what he had done and hung himself. That’s my interpretation of it, Auberson—not the traditional, I’ll agree, but it has more meaning to me. Judas’s mistake was in believing too hard and not questioning first what he thought were facts. I don’t intend to repeat that mistake.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 37 (p. 216)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

God, Faith, Hope, Way

“Masculine process has at its foundation externalization. The young boy is focused away from his inner and personal self and into achievement, performance, competition, success, emotional control (being "cool"), autonomy (not being dependent or needy), fearlessness, action, and an ethic that only values time spent in doing. Anything else is suspect and viewed as lazy, worthless, time-wasting, or meaningless.Externalization, or the process of being pushed outside of oneself, amplifies and eventually becomes disconnection. Personal relationships are then objectified and founded on the role another can play in his life. Relationships are based on doing and are therefore fairly readily interchangeable with anyone else who can do.Disconnection leads men to the experience of being loners, where it's "lonely at the top," and freedom, space, and "doing one's thing," are the rationalized values. Disconnection transforms a man into someone who has everything he wanted externally, but has nothing that is bonded or connected on a personal level. He is "out of touch," so he doesn't know why he's unhappy, and may conclude that the cause of his malaise is that he needs "more." He sets out to get it, but when he gets it he feels deader and more isolated than ever.The end stage of this journey of masculine process is personal oblivion, which can occur early in his life or may not appear full blown until he's an older man, depending on how extreme his externalized process is. At this point, personal connection becomes impossible. He doesn't know he rationalizes his personal emptiness with cynical philosophies and escapes painful awareness through non-relationships he can control by buying. In the end state of oblivion, he is beyond personal reach and can only relate in abstract, depersonalized, intellectualized ways. The only way he is "loved" is in return for providing or taking care of others.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, pp. 10–11
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love, Life, Men, Pain

Quotes about suspect page 3

Quotes about suspect
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