Quotes about swing (250 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Only few people, the leaders, have graduated from the school of religion. The others continue to swing back and forth like a pendulum. The lost sheep.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

School , Religion , People

“Everyone thinks and imagines that life is easier on the other side. Their minds swing like a pendulum.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Imagination , Thinking , Life

“After knowing that the sun neither sets nor rises except for our imaginations and the limitations of our planet Earth, there can be no more mood swings in the heart and mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Imagination , Sun , Heart , Mood

“It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing).”

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) American jazz musician, composer and band leader

Song title (1932).

“Gordon put his hand against the swing door. He even pushed it open a few inches. The warm fog of smoke and beer slipped through the crack. A familiar, reviving smell; nevertheless as he smelled it his nerve failed him. No! Impossible to go in. He turned away. He couldn't go shoving into that saloon bar with only fourpence halfpenny in his pocket. Never let other people buy your drinks for you! The first commandment of the moneyless. He made off down the dark pavement.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 4

People , Drink , Beer

“For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn…”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

People

“But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

World , Music , Sex , Dance

“To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.”

Katherine Paterson book Jacob Have I Loved

Source: Jacob Have I Loved

Fear

“Monkey bar," Annabeth said. "I'm great at these." She leaped onto to the first rung and start swinging her way across. She was scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Death , Way

“What surprises you in life? The marvel of consciousness -- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidst the night of non-being.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Life , Night

“It was just the time. It was a swing from more buxom girls like Cindy Crawford and people were shocked to see what they called a 'waif'. What can you say? How many times can you say 'I'm not anorexic'?”

Kate Moss (1974) English model and businesswoman

March, 2003 interview with website Showstudio

People , Girl , Time

“I consider myself a line drive hitter with power. I just try to put my best swing on the ball every time.”

Albert Pujols (1980) Dominican-American baseball player

When asked what type of hitter he would consider himself to be. http://sports.ign.com/articles/709/709384p1.html

Time

“When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. I, st. 4
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

“Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual motion. The give-and-take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning. The pain of losing. It's as good as it gets! You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is in the fun.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

Pain , Friendship , Home , Game

“[On why criminals rob nice-looking houses] You come up on a house where the grass is this tall, and there's a dog chained to the clothesline, and a motor swinging in the tree, buddy, that's a house where a gun lives! And you want to find out what kind it is, just crawl through the window after dark.”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Totally Committed (1998)

Dogs , Tree , Grass , Housing

“But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences. Not many years ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word interests to stampede millions of people into voting against him, because anything associated with "the interests" seemed necessary corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action.
By playing upon a old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass group emotions.”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Page 74
Propaganda (1928)

People , Idea , Thinking , Personality

“It became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat.”

Artie Shaw (1910–2004) American clarinetist, composer, and bandleader

On "Begin the Beguine", as quoted in Artie Shaw, the Reluctant 'King of Swing', 2002-03-08, 2007-12-20, http://web.archive.org/web/20020804051447/http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/mar/shaw/, 2002-08-04 http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/mar/shaw/,

Time

“Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,
One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,
And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—
Most individual and bewildering ghost!—
And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.”

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) British poet

Sonnet http://books.google.com/books?id=SDgOAQAAMAAJ&q="Oh+Death+will+find+me+long+before+I+tire+Of+watching+you"&pg=PA47#v=onepage (1908-1910)

Death , Smile , Dreams , Feeling

“I call investing the greatest business in the world … because you never have to swing.”

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

Interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974)
Variant: The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don't have to swing at everything — you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you're a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, "Swing, you bum!"
1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, as quoted in The Tao of Warren Buffett by Mary Buffett and David Clark p. 145
Context: I call investing the greatest business in the world … because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U. S. Steel at 39! and nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.

World , Business

“Today it’s time to stop singing and start swinging. You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Detroit, Michigan (12 April 1964)
Context: The government has failed us; you can’t deny that. Anytime you live in the twentieth century, 1964, and you’re walking around here singing “We Shall Overcome,” the government has failed us. This is part of what’s wrong with you -- you do too much singing. Today it’s time to stop singing and start swinging. You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn’t help him to become the heavyweight champion of the world; swinging helped him become the heavyweight champion.

Freedom , Singing , Time

“I could always hit a home run, but if I try to do that all the time, maybe I not hit over.300. I am more valuable to my team hitting.330,.340, than I am swinging for home runs.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Speaking before Game 7 of the 1971 World Series, as quoted in "Numero Uno: Roberto!" http://www.mediafire.com/view/1vobx891junlic4/.JPG (1973) by Bill Christine, p. 141
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>

Home , Time

“Mood swings are constantly haunting us, even in our dreams, from achieving perfection.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Dreams , Perfection , Mood

“She wished she had a little yellow house of her own, with a flower box full of real flowers and herbs – pansies and rosemary – and a sweet lover who would swing dance with her in the evenings and cook pasta and read poetry aloud.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Violet & Claire

Flowers , Lovers , Reading , Dance

“It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.”

Maya Angelou book Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women

Source: Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women

Joy

“Yeah, well, I guess I feel like all of us misfits need to hang together. At least that way we don't swing along. (Tabitha)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

Way , Feeling

“The freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Sacred Ground

Freedom

“No, see the slide’s too high. He could fall and get a concussion. (Wulf)
Forget that. He could rack himself on the teeter-totter. (Chris)
Teeter-totter nothing. The swings are a choking hazard. Whose idea was it for him to have this? (Urian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Idea , Forgetting

“She's you, without your conscience, or your feelings. She's you without your humanity."
"You're saying she's a mood swing?"
He shrugged. "Or maybe you're her mood swing."
"Don't even joke about that.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

Feeling , Mood

“For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Cheating , Box

“The angel has confided in me that he is going to ask the Lord if he can become Spider-Man. […] The children need heroes, he says. I think he just wants to swing from buildings in tight red jammies.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Children , Angels , Confidence , Thinking

“His laugh is made if porch swings and lemonade”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

“The mother… swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Children , Angels , Time , Animals

“The most important tactic in an argument next to being right is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Loss

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Love

“More like Cross blew your circuits during one of his sexathons. Still can’t get over that man’s stamina. Wish he’d swing my way and wear me out.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Way

“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Life , Pain

“Percy: "Hey, why do pegasi gallop as they fly, anyway?"

Blackjack: "Why do humans swing their arms as they walk? I dunno, boss. It just feels right.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Variant: Why do you need to gallop while you fly?"
"Why do humans have to sway their arms while they walk? I dunno boss, but it just feels right.
Source: The Last Olympian

Feeling , Flying

“Most people think everybody feels about them much more violently than they actually do; they think other people's opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

People , Feeling , Thinking

“You can't swing a cat in Ancient Greece without hitting one of Zeus's ex-girlfriends.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Cats

“Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Dogs

“I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' -- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life

“He roared at me furiously for ten minutes after he finally managed to put out the sulky and determined fire, calling me a witless muttonheaded spawn of pig farmers-"My father's a wood-cutter," I said- "adOf axe-swinging lummocks!" he snarled.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

“Her legs swing complete afternoons away.”

Jill Eisenstadt (1963) American writer

Source: From Rockaway

“The doorway to success swings outward not inward.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Greatness Guide: Powerful Secrets for Getting to World Class

Success

“None of [the books are] worth reading. There are no fairy tales, no faerie tails, no sword-swinging princesses or lightning-throwing gods.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

God , Books , Reading , Princess

“He sweeps her hair back from her ears; he swings her above his head. He says she is his émerveillement. He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

For Father

“What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“Juke glanced into her cup before tipping it down to her mouth. "Screw you!"
"Now come on, sugar, you know I don't swing that way."
"Whatever!”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Way

“Very few people mate for life with the people they fall for at twelve. Doesn't mean is isn't real, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, doesn't mean it doesn't matter, but basically, we're talking a practice swing in the big game of love.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Faking It

Love , Life , People , Game

“We are crayons and lunchboxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“It all seems so sad, so unbearably sad for a second, to think of the lovely old maple with the swing. We never told the tree how much we loved it. We never gave it a name, never did anything for it.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Love , Sadness , Thinking , Tree

“He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus.
I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.”

Raymond Chandler book Pearls are a Nuisance

"Pearls Are a Nuisance" (short story, 1939)
Source: Pearls are a Nuisance

“The pendulum swings between Light and Darkness”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Light

“I challenge you to a duel!” screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier.”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

Cats

“Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

Source: The October Country

Life , Art

“I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you. I want to ride in the swing of your hips. My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Sense , Passion , Parting

“The empty swing set reminds us of this--
that bad won't be bad forever,
and what is good can sometimes last
a long, long time.”

Jacqueline Woodson book Brown Girl Dreaming

Source: Brown Girl Dreaming

Time

“Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt.”

Wynton Marsalis (1961) American jazz musician

http://www.trumpetherald.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36024
Attributed

Hurt

“So the pendulum swings, now violently, now slowly; and every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.”

William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) Dean of St Pauls

" Democracy and the Future http://books.google.com/books?id=KAhOjxIHy4QC&q="so+the+pendulum+swings+now+violently+now+slowly+and+every+institution+not+only+carries+within+it+the+seeds+of+its+own+dissolution+but+prepares+the+way+for+its+most+hated+rival"&pg=PA289#v=onepage" The Atlantic Monthly (March 1922)

Hate , Way

“Participants perceive swings in national mood, elections bring new administrations to power and new partisan or ideological distributions to Congress, and interest groups of various descriptions press (or fail to press) their demands on government.”

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 9, Wrapping Things Up, p. 196

Mood

“At my arrival [in Paris], Fauvism. Cubism, and Futurism were in full swing. There was in the air the glamour of a battle, the holy battle raging for the assertion of a new truth. My youth plunged full in it.”

Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist

Joseph Stella (1911); Quoted in: Judith Zilczer (1983) Joseph Stella: : The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection, p. 10

Truth , Youth , Rage , Future

“Whether we believe the Greek poet, "it is sometimes even pleasant to be mad", or Plato, "he who is master of himself has knocked in vain at the doors of poetry"; or Aristotle, "no great genius was without a mixture of insanity"; the mind cannot express anything lofty and above the ordinary unless inspired. When it despises the common and the customary, and with sacred inspiration rises higher, then at length it sings something grander than that which can come from mortal lips. It cannot attain anything sublime and lofty so long as it is sane: it must depart from the customary, swing itself aloft, take the bit in its teeth, carry away its rider and bear him to a height whither he would have feared to ascend alone.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

In Latin, nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit (There is no great genius without some touch of madness). This passage by Seneca is the source most often cited in crediting Aristotle with this thought, but in Problemata xxx. 1, Aristotle says: 'Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?' The quote by Plato is from the Dialogue Phaedrus (245a).
On Tranquility of the Mind

Fear , Singing , Madness

“In reality the cycles we have the occasion to observe are generally not damped. How can the maintenance of the swings be explained? Have theses dynamic laws deduced from theory and showing damped oscillations no value in explaining the real phenomena, or in what respect do the dynamic laws need to be completed in order to explain the real happenings? They (dynamic laws) only form one element of the explanation: they solve the propagation problem. But the impulse problem remains.”

Ragnar Frisch Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics

Source: 1930s, Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics, 1933, p. 197

Law , Problem , Reality

“To some extent my generation was reared on the Three Cheers view of history. This patriotic view of our past had a long run. It saw Australian history as largely a success. While the convict era was a source of shame or unease, nearly everything that came after was believed to be pretty good. There is a rival view, which I call the Black Armband view of history. In recent years it has assailed the optimistic view of history. The black armbands were quietly worn in official circles in 1988. The multicultural folk busily preached their message that until they arrived much of Australian history was a disgrace. The past treatment of Aborigines, of Chinese, of Kanakas, of non-British migrants, of women, the very old, the very young, and the poor was singled out, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not. … The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"Balance Sheet On Our History," Quadrant (July 1993)

Women , History , Success , Past

“Listen, I shouldn't even be playing. I showed up at spring training and I told the ball club about my accident. I said my shoulder had been damaged and the ballclub said "Sh-h-h, don't talk so loud. Somebody might hear you; Now, don't tell anybody about this." They said, "I don't want to know about it." Well, I tell you, it hurts me to swing a bat and, when I know it is going to hurt, it bothers me mentally and I do not swing the same and I wince when I think of hitting the ball. I should be home, not here in the dugout, because [sic] I would rather play even if I am crippled than to sit and watch a game.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Living or Dead, Clemente is a Tough Man to Beat" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cqJQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u1wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6928%2C6358384 by Jim Murray, in The Los Angeles Times (August 9, 1968)
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1968</big>

Home , Game , Spring , Thinking

“And I say to you this morning in conclusion that I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in things. I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in gadgets and contrivances. As a young man with most of my life ahead of me, I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute. Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow, but to God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Not in the little gods that can be with us in a few moments of prosperity, but in the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and causes us to fear no evil. That's the God. Not in the god that can give us a few Cadillac cars and Buick convertibles, as nice as they are, that are in style today and out of style three years from now, but the God who threw up the stars to bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity. Not in the god that can throw up a few skyscraping buildings, but the God who threw up the gigantic mountains, kissing the sky, as if to bathe their peaks in the lofty blues. Not in the god that can give us a few televisions and radios, but the God who threw up that great cosmic light that gets up early in the morning in the eastern horizon, (who paints its technicolor across the blue—something that man could never make. I'm not going to put my ultimate faith in the little gods that can be destroyed in an atomic age, but the God who has been our help in ages past, and our hope for years to come, and our shelter in the time of storm, and our eternal home. That's the God that I'm putting my ultimate faith in.”

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

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)

Life , Death , God , Age

“Society will oscillate between long periods of relative stagnation in which state-protected privileges crowd out experiments in the organization of production and brief interludes in which much is destroyed before anything can be created. To perpetuate the practice of innovation, societies must replace such drastic and violent swings with a more constant liquefaction of deals and privileges. They must invent the structures that make structures easier to change.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), p. 192

Change

“There is one hit of mine which will not stay in the official records, but which I believe to be the longest clout ever made off a major league pitcher. At least some of the veteran sport writers told me they never saw such a wallop. The Yanks were playing an exhibition game with the Brooklyn Nationals at Jacksonville, Fla., in April, 1920. Al Mamaux was pitching for Brooklyn. In the first inning, the first ball he sent me was a nice, fast one, a little lower than my waist, straight across the heart of the plate. It was the kind I murder, and I swung to kill it. The last time we saw the ball it was swinging its way over the 10-foot outfield fence of Southside Park and going like a shot. The ball cleared the fence by at least 75 feet. Let's say the total distance traveled was 500 feet: the fence was 423 feet from the plate. If such a hit had been made at the Polo Grounds, I guess the ball would have come pretty close to the top of the screen in the centerfield bleachers.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

In "Wherein Babe Tells of Some Longish Swats" http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1920/08/15/page/18/article/wherein-babe-tells-of-some-longish-swats by Ruth (as told to Pegler), in The Chicago Tribune (August 15, 1920); reprinted as "The Longest Hit in Baseball" https://books.google.com/books?id=SAAlxi-0EZYC&pg=PA39&dq=%22There+is+one+hit+of+mine%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjngMzRjbnQAhXDYyYKHe-JCCMQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q=%22There%20is%20one%20hit%20of%20mine%22&f=false2 in Playing the Game: My Early Years in Baseball, p. 39

Way , Travel , Game , Sport

“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom´
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men (1925)

Death , Dreams , Star , Tree

“I’ll have to throw it at him, Rebel thought. Swing it up, catch him under the jaw, break a few teeth. Then grab the knife and hold him for the security people. That was a good plan. It ranked right up there with suddenly learning how to teleport.”

Michael Swanwick book Vacuum Flowers

Source: Vacuum Flowers (1987), Chapter 5, “People's Sheraton” (pp. 74-75)

People , Learning

“QUEEN: But Hymen's torch, held downward, shall drop out,
And for it, the mad Furies swing their brands
About the bride-chamber.”

Thomas Dekker The Noble Spanish Soldier

The Noble Spanish Soldier (1622)

Madness

“Getting to Mars is too big an accomplishment for us to feel proud by just by swinging by. We are a nation of enterprise as well as exploration, and we're not about to go there without making something of it.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Page 10
Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007), Foreword to Marc Kaufman's Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission https://books.google.com/books/about/Mars_Up_Close.html?ido6XaCwAAQBAJ&hlen. National Geographic. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.

Feeling

“Modigliani's theory was a powerful searchlight on what was happening… It is the best explanation of what has actually been happening in the great swing of American life since the 1950's.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Paul Samuelson in: Louis Uchitelle. " Franco Modigliani, 85, Nobel-Winning Economist, Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/obituaries/26MODI.html" in New York Times, September 26, 2003.
New millennium

Life

“Mike Morgan is the pitcher. Here's the pitch to McGwire … SWING … looky there! LOOKY THERE!!!! Looky there! McGwire's number sixty-one!!! McGwire's flight 61 headed for Planet Maris! History! Bedlam! What a moment! Pardon me while I stand up and applaud!”

Jack Buck (1924–2002) American sportscaster

Calling Mark McGwire's single season record-tying 61st home run in 1998.
1990s

History

“I want play but back hurt. If I no can play good, I no help team. So I wait until pain goes away. I no swing bat good, no run good, no catch ball like old times. I try but pain, she too much. Some days, no pain. Other days, pain all time. Some days pain so much I theenk maybe I quit baseball. But I need money so I play baseball.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted and paraphrased in "Aching Back Puts Clemente On Bench Again" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nUEqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BU4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7330%2C2562781 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Friday, July 26, 1957), p. 20
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1957</big>
Context: "I want play but back hurt. If I no can play good, I no help team. So I wait until pain goes away. I no swing bat good, no run good, no catch ball like old times. I try but pain, she too much. Some days, no pain. Other days, pain all time. Some days pain so much I theenk maybe I quit baseball. But I need money so I play baseball." Clemente doesn't even want to think of an operation on his back. He says he had two brothers and a sister who died following surgery and his family opposes operations.

Money , Pain , Time , Waiting

“[The] length of the cycles and the tendency towards dampening are determined by the intrinsic structure of the swinging system, while the intensity (the amplitude) of the fluctuations is determined primarily by the exterior impulse. An important consequence of this is that a more or less regular ﬂuctuation may be be produced by a cause which operates irregularly.”

Ragnar Frisch Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics

Source: 1930s, Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics, 1933, p. 1

“The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one set of colluding quislings to the other, and back.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“A Palin Third-Party?” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=530 WorldNetDaily.com, January 15, 2010.
2010s, 2010

Partnership

“My dad hates umbrellas,” said Deeba, swinging her own. “When it rains he always says the same thing. ‘I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society’s usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.’”

China Miéville book Un Lun Dun

Source: Un Lun Dun (2007), Chapter 3, “The Visiting Smoke” (p. 11)

Hate

“Whose starward eye
Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
“Nobody knows de trouble I see”?”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

O Black and Unknown Bards, st. 2.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
And we'll all stay free.

Praise the Lord and swing into position
Can't afford to sit around a-wishin'
Praise the Lord, we're all between perdition
And the deep blue sea.”

Frank Loesser (1910–1969) American songwriter

Song Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.

Sea

“I can hit it farther on the moon. But actually, my swing is better here on Earth.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

The Orlando Sentinel staff (August 13, 1992) "Lunar-Golfer Shepard Takes Swings In Tourney", The Orlando Sentinel, p. A2.

“!-- Setting forth once more, embarking upon the search once again: the narrow path that snakes among livid rocks and desolate, camel-colored hills; white houses hanging suspended from cliffs, looking as though they were about to let go and fall on the wayfarer’s head; the smell of sweating hides and cow dung; the buzz of afternoon; the screams of monkeys leaping about amid the branches of the trees or scampering along the flat rooftops or swinging from the railings of a balcony; overhead, birds circling and the bluish spirals of smoke rising from kitchen fires; the almost pink light on the stones; the taste of salt on parched lips; the sound of loose earth slithering away beneath one’s feet; the dust that clings to one’s sweat-drenched skin, makes one’s eyes red, and chokes one’s lungs; i --> Images, memories, fragmentary shapes and forms — all those sensations, visions, half-thoughts that appear and disappear in the wink of an eye, as one sets forth to meet…. The path also disappears as I think of it, as I say it.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 1

Color , Search , Bird , Thinking

“The little girl's creative, a repertoire that rings,
And Hollywood is waiting, to see the way she swings.
She'll be graduating, goin' on to higher things,
The little girl from Central is gonna take on wings.”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Little Girl from Central" (1964)
Song lyrics

Way , Girl , Waiting

“b>One of the loveliest and most magnificent events that can happen in the country is when ponies take fright, particularly in a herd. A meadow-pippit has flown past. The ponies' fear is at first blended with play, even with mockery, amusement touched with a shudder, not unlike the behavior of the mentally ill. They trot as if they were retreating from a slow-moving stream of fire, but with lightning in every action, storm in every nerve; swinging their heads everywhere as if the front of their necks were made of elastic, gracefully flirting their tails. They can even pause for a moment, and start biting and boxing, with those romantic mating cries of theirs. Then all at once it is as if the fire has started flowing right under these strange creatures, they charge away like a storm incarnate over scree and bogs and landslides, dipping the tips of their toes for a fractional moment into the furnace that blazes beneath their hooves, cutting across waterfalls, gullys, and boulders, galloping steeply for a while until they stand trapped at last on some ledge high in the mountaintops, there to die and be eaten by birds.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

Fear , Behavior , Bird , Past

“Orta, leading off, swings and hits it to the right side, and the pitcher has to cover he is … SAFE! SAFE! SAFE! And we'll have an argument! Sparky, I think he was out!”

Jack Buck (1924–2002) American sportscaster

Calling Don Denkinger's blown call in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series that ignited a Royals game-winning rally.
1980s

Thinking

“The combination of the Liberal and Labour Parties is much stronger than the Liberal Party would be if there were no third Party in existence. Many men who would in that case have voted for us voted on this occasion as the Labour Party told them i. e. for the Liberals. The Labour Party has "come to stay"…the existence of the third Party deprives us of the full benefits of the 'swing of the pendulum', introduces a new element into politics and confronts us with a new difficulty.”

Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) British politician

Late 1910s, quoted in E. H. H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 141.
1910s

Men

“I feared that such a prize, as I believe is true of the activities of some of the great scientific foundations, would tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion. This apprehension the selection committee has brilliantly refuted by awarding the prize to one whose views are as unfashionable as mine are.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1960s–1970s, Nobel Banquet Speech (1974)

Fear , Fashion

“When rowan leaves are dank and rusting
And rowan berries red as blood,
When in my palm the hangman's thrusting
The final nail with bony thud,
When, over the foul flooding river,
Upon the wet grey height, I toss
Before my land's grim looks, and shiver
As I swing here upon the cross,
Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches
My dying sight to space remote;
I see upon the river’s reaches
Christ sailing to me in a boat.”

Alexander Blok (1880–1921) poet

"Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.

Christ

“I think that the figure of the nerd provides a beautiful template for analyzing the transformation of the disciplinary society into the control society. The nerd, in his cliche form, first stepped out upon the world stage in the mid-1970s, when we were beginning to hear the first rumblings of what would become the Cambrian explosion of the information society. The nerd must serve as comic relief for the future-anxieties of Western society. And the transformation I'm talking about is already in full swing: the police gaze of 19th- and 20th-century disciplinary society made visible the individual, which is illuminated by power. In our burgeoning technological control society, the individual is x-rayed and algorithmized. Even worse: the individuals x-ray themselves, willingly putting themselves on display.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2016/04/14/the-story-of-traceroute-about.html

World , Beauty , Thinking , Future

“Everybody, they say Roberto just swings the bat and hits the ball. I work hard. No one works harder than I do. People think things come easy to me. They don't.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Says Hitting Does Not Come Easy" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UagkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xqAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5876%2C6101257 by Ralph Bernstein (AP), in The Reading Eagle (March 26, 1968)
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1968</big>

People , Thinking

“Clendenon isn't like he was last year. If he comes back again, I'll start punching the ball again. But I've been taking a good cut and swinging hard.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in “Donn Drags, Not Clemente” https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1vAjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HZsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5832%2C2309718 by Murray Chass (AP), in The Tuscaloosa News (Tuesday, June 14, 1966), p. 5
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high… That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit… However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction… I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation. There is certainly no virtue in taxation for its own sake… We have been building up, not dissipating, overseas assets. The question is whether, while so doing, we have been neglecting our investment at home and particularly that in the public services. There is no doubt, in my mind at any rate, about the ability of a low taxation market-oriented economy to produce consumer goods, even if an awful lot of them are imported, far better than any planned economy that ever was or probably ever can be invented. However, I am not convinced that such a society and economy, particularly if it is not infused with the civic optimism which was in many ways the true epitome of Victorian values, is equally good at protecting the environment or safeguarding health, schools, universities or Britain's scientific future. And if we are asked which is under greater threat in Britain today—the supply of consumer goods or the nexus of civilised public services—it would be difficult not to answer that it was the latter.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988).

Wisdom , People , Health , School

“Watching storms
Start to form
Over America.
Can't do anything.
Just watch them swing
With the wind
Out to sea.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

Sea

“The propagation problem is the problem of explaining by the structural properties of the swinging system what the character of the swings would be in case the system was started in some initial situation”

Ragnar Frisch Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics

Source: 1930s, Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics, 1933, p. 1

Problem

“I was in the streets marching for civil rights while asshole southern sheriffs were swinging nail studded baseball bats at blacks' heads. Two things you can always count on: I will defend my record on race to no one (sic), under any circumstances and, I will call out any racist, any time without regard to who they are... and that includes our half white, racist President.”

Mark Williams American conservative activist, radio talk show host and author

Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/05/21/2010-05-21_nothing_is_out_of_bounds_for_national_tea_party_express_foulmouthed_leader_mark_.html#ixzz0oxS7r1Rj

Time

“So what’s happened since ’92, it’s where the administrations that changed quite dramatically, the foreign policy, and it was working more like pendulum, swinging from one side to the other. Clinton did very little, W did too much, Obama has been doing nothing. It sent a message – sent numerous messages across the world. While people knew in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that America was there, America was consistent. Even if you have a change in the Oval Office, one party replaces another, you could rely on the United States. America was behind American allies. Today? It’s probably, it’s a springtime to be an American enemy because this administration gives up everything to the enemies and betrays allies. And going back to George W. administration, it’s very popular to criticize Bush today, Bush 43. Especially for the Iraq invasion, and I’ve heard many voices, even within the Republican Party, it’s just floating with the popular trend. First of all, I have to say as somebody who was born and raised in a Communist country, I cannot criticize any action that led to the destruction of dictatorship. I think his people had wrong expectations. When they saw the collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship after American invasion of Iraq and then the collapse of a few other dictatorships during the Arab Spring, they had expectations that next day, it would be a democracy. It’s wrong. It was very naive because dictators succeeds the staying in power for so many years, not because he’s a nice guy, just helps his people to get out of poverty, but because he’s brutal, he’s cruel. He succeeds in destroying opposition, first political opposition and then freedom of press and remaining horizontal ties in the society. All the NGOs, anything that could represent not just a threat to him, but it’s any sort of the slightest dissent. It’s kind of a political desert. What do you expect in a desert after 10, 20, 30 – in the case of Gaddafi, 42 years of dictatorship?”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

People , World , Guy , Democracy

“By the end of my PhD I could swing a sledgehammer.”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) British scientist

Beautiful Minds (2010)

“…[Bob Kane] had an idea for a character called "Batman", and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of … reddish tights, I believe, with boots … no gloves, no gauntlets … with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign … BATMAN.”

Bill Finger (1914–1974) American comic strip and comic book writer

[Jim Steranko, The Steranko History of Comics, Supergraphics, Reading, Pa., 1970, ISBN 0-517-50188-0, p.44]

Idea , Drawing

“I love the game too much to quit. But right now I can't run or swing a bat too well. I had my tonsils out two weeks ago in Pittsburgh and that helped, but I still have the pain. I am studying to be a civil engineer in Puerto Rico, so that's what I'll do if I have to give up baseball.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted and paraphrased in "Not to Quit, Clemente Says" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=48ZRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2GsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4385%2C3795732 by the Associated Press, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Friday, July 26, 1957), p. 14
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1957</big>

Love , Pain , Game , Study