Quotes about talking
page 32

“Given lesser opportunities, Kissinger would have done very well as a talk show host. Fortunately for him, although not so fortunately for the United States, he found his patron in Nelson Rockefeller instead of William Paley.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 7, Descent Into The Mirror, p. 190

“Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood.
Hop a flight to Miami Beach
Or to Hollywood
But I'm talking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River Line.
I'm in a New York state of mind.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

New York State of Mind.
Song lyrics, Turnstiles (1976)

Holiday

“Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."”

John Backus (1924–2007) American computer scientist

"Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?" http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=1283933&type=pdf, 1977 Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM 21 (8), (August 1978): pp. 639-640

Law, Understanding

“King Aillas talks softly and with great politeness; he has the uncomfortable skill of calling one a false-hearted blackguard, a liar, a cheat and a villain, but making it seem a fulsome compliment.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 6, section 5 (p. 807)

Heart, Cheating, Falseness

“Men always talk about the most important things to total strangers. It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Club of Queer Trades

The Club of Queer Trades http://books.google.com/books?id=mjcdk4InFzoC&q=&quot;Men+always+talk+about+the+most+important+things+to+total+strangers+it+is+because+in+the+total+stranger+we+perceive+man+himself+the+image+of+God+is+not+disguised+by+resemblances+to+an+uncle+or+doubts+of+the+wisdom+of+a+moustache&quot;&pg=PT93#v=onepage (1905) Ch. 5 "The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd" book The Club of Queer Trades

Wisdom, Men, God

“All the excitements of a prohibited book had their usual effect, one of which, as always, is to expose the fact that the censors don't know what they are talking about.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Not Dead Yet" (1999).
2000s, 2000, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (2000)

Books

“Modernist tasks and liberties have stirred up a canny diffidence among painters of the largest accomplishment when pressed to talk about their art. It appears unseemly, or naive, to have much to say about the pictures or to attach to them any explicit "program." No more theories expounding an ideal way of painting. And, as statements wither and with them counter-statements, hardly anything in the way of provocation either. Decorum suggests that artists sound somewhat trapped when being drawn out, and venturing a few cagey glimpses of intention.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"About Hodgkin," from Howard Hodgkin Paintings edited by Michael Auping (1995), p. 105,

Art, Way, Appearance, Painting

“And I thought to myself: I actually have a conection to this place, it's part of my musical legacy. [Hammett talking about Scorpions]”

Kirk Hammett (1962) American musician

Germany's Radio (November 2016)

Music, Parting

“Hey folks, tonight I wanna talk about global warming. Now, The World is Hot and Flat Society is growing increasingly hysterical and that indeed is causing me to sweat a little. In the last month or so, I've heard suggestions that those skeptical of Al Gore's spiritual crisis are deniers and one good way to serve the planet would be to have one less kid and I've also read that mankind is 'a virus' and human beings are 'the AIDS of the earth.' Global warming is officially becoming creepy and I can't tell yet if it's facisitc or fetishistic but it's kinda like piercing or tattoos, I don't even wanna get one, because I see how hooked people are and it spooks me. I just find it odd that we've come to a point in history where if I don't concede that if Manhattan will be completely submerged in 2057 I'm thought to be a delusional contrarian by some of my more zealous fellow citizens. I'm sorry Angst Squad, but if we commissioned a public works project (let's call it 'The Manhattan Project') and tried our hardest to submerge Manhattan in the next 50 years, we couldn't pull it off, mainly because it wouldn't be environmentally sound and you guys would hang it up in the permitting process. Simply put, I can't worry about the earth right now because I'm too worried about the world. Why can't I take terrorism as seriously as Al Gore takes global warming? There are times that you think that liberals only fear car bombs if they have leaky exhaust systems. And why am I constantly beaten over the head with 'the delicate balance of nature'? Am I the only one who watches Animal Planet? Every time I turn it on, I see some demented harp seal chucking peguins down his gullet like they were maitre d'Tic-Tacs. To me, nature always appears more unbalanced than Gary Busey with a clogged eustachian tube. Listen, the weather is just like Hilary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we? We're here to miss our next Tuesday's weather much less the year 2057. Relax, we'll replace oil when we need to. American ingenuity will kick in and the next great fortune will be made. It's not pretty, but it is historically accurate. We need to run out of oil first. That's why I drive an SUV: so we run out of it more quickly. I consider myself at the vanguard of the environmental movement and I think the individuals who insist on driving hybrids are just prolonging our dillemma and I think that's just selfish. Come on, don't you care about our Mother Earth? Don'tcha?”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

6/17 The Half Hour News Hour
The Buck Starts Here

War, People, World, Fear

“Four out of five teenagers I talked with did not get “high” until the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh time that they tried alcohol and/pr pot.”

Virgil Miller Newton (1938) American priest

Miller Newton (1981). Gone Way Down: Teenage Drug-Use is a Disease, American Studies Press, Tampa, FL, pg 37.
On Teenage Drug Use

Alcohol, Time

“kummel and have deep conversations about Plato and Kant while listening to classical music. Or she would spend the entire morning in the bathtub, with bubble-bath up to her chin, reading Proust. If you wanted to talk to her you had to do it in the bathroom.”

Joan Vollmer (1923–1951) Common-law wife of William S. Burroughs

Joan's idea of a good time was to go to Child's at 110th Street and Broadway and sip
About

Music, Reading

“The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.”

Carl Bernstein (1944) American journalist

An A-Z of cultural terms, The Guardian (1992)

Failure

“My God, it was really coming true. The higher and higher I climbed in education, the more I was finding people I could talk to.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

God, People, Education

“On the question of Israel, I talk about what I saw during his trip to Israel, how I saw his (Barack Obama) understanding of the relationship with Israel - he would describe it as a commitment of the head and heart. He looks at Israel and sees us as being two countries with common values. But he also looks at Israel and sees that whatever threatens Israel also happens to threaten the United States. So we have a [common] interest, because we end up facing the same threats.”

Dennis Ross (1948) American diplomat

Understanding, Question, Heart, Country

“I advocate an alliance of democratic states, with a dual purpose. One, to promote what I call open society. I talk about an alliance of open societies which would first foster the development of open societies within individual countries, because there's a lot that needs to be done in that effort. And secondly, to establish basic international law and international institutions that you need for a global, open society. So that's my sort of broad concept. Now, I have not worked out the details, because I don't think it's for me to work out the details. It's for them to work out the details.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Interview with Mark Shapiro (2000)

Law, Thinking, Effort, Country

“The nation is deeply divided and the two camps seem to be talking past each other. John Kerry won all three debates but President Bush invokes his faith and that inspires his followers. In the end, it boils down to a philosophical difference over how to deal with an often confusing and threatening reality.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

Faith, Reality, Past

“We're talking about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, by Muslims, and justified using their holy scripture. But apparently it's got nothing to do with Islam. Well, I'm sorry, but just because every Muslim doesn't support it doesn't mean it's not Islamic. People say you can't judge Islam by its followers, but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers. Because there's no central authority the Koran is open to interpretation by men, who, being human, will always interpret to suit their own cultural prejudices. So Islam is its followers. It's a representation of how they interpret their holy book. And therefore, the only way it can be judged is by their behaviour.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sharia fiasco" (10 February 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=mM2dC1iWzww 2008

Men, People, Books, Way

“Practise silence, for the voice of God can be heard in the region of your heart only when the tongue and the inner storm are stilled, and the waves (of the mind) are calmed. There will be no temptation for others to shout when you talk to them in whispers. Set the level of the tone yourself: as low as possible, as high as necessary to reach the outermost boundary of the circle you are addressing. Conserve sound, since it is the treasure of the element ether (Akasa), an emanation from God Himself. Reason can prevail only when the arguments are advanced without the whipping up of sound. Silence is the speech of the spiritual seeker. Soft speech is the expression of genuine love. Hate screeches; fear squeals; conceit trumpets; but love sings lullabies, it soothes, it applies balm. Practise the vocabulary of love; unlearn the language of hate and contempt.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

"Divine Discourse" (19 February 1970)

Love, God, Hate, Fear

“God doesn't want us to pile up impressive phrases. He doesn't want us to use words without thinking about their meaning. He wants us to talk to him as to a friend or father - authentically, reverently, personally, earnestly.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God, Thinking, Personality

“We are getting mixed up with the French tradition. In talking about the necessity to 'finish' a thing, we then said American painters 'finish' a thing that looks 'unfinished', and the French, they 'finish' it. I have seen Henri Matisse's that were more 'unfinished' and yet more 'finished' than any American painters. Matisse was obviously in a terrific emotion at the time and he was more 'unfinished' than 'finished.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

Source: 1950s, Artists' Session at Studio 35, (1950), p. 216

Time

“I recollect after the war in '71 [in Paris, where he stayed then and was fighting against the German] there were some debts to pay of course: what had I to do? I said to Wisselingh [Dutch art-dealer] who was with Goupil, 'tell them that I'll take them back later on.' I've never been able to do so, for one Van Gogh [probably Vincent, then art-seller at Goupil], his partner, gave me 200 francs, someone bought it for 350, and sold it in America for 700 pounds. He had asked Wisselingh how long it had taken me to do [make] it; he said a week, so I was the chap for him; no wonder he was always talking making fortune, fancy 100 pounds per day, make some more or this sort: do it only for a year. So I had to commit suicides upon suicides [he means, making salable paintings]: what did it matter to him or anyone else? Someone said once to me: 'You must have somebody fool enough to say, here is money for you, and go your own way': that is the very thing one may not do. There is always someone telling you how to set about, and then come the schools telling you that it is not allowed to be one's self, but that one has to be a Roman or Greek, or imitate what they have performed..”

Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) Dutch painter

in a letter to David Croal Thomson (1907), as cited in: The Brothers Maris (James – Matthew – William), ed. Charles Holme; text: D.C. Thomson https://ia800204.us.archive.org/1/items/cu31924016812756/cu31924016812756.pdf; publishers, Offices of 'The Studio', London - Paris, 1907, p. BMxvii

Money, War, School, Fools

“[On "grunge"] Music's music, and the weird thing is Brant [Bjork] has said this before; Soundgarden and those bands and Nirvana, those are great bands, but they did not create rock and roll. This whole "grunge" bullshit that everyone's talking about. "Oh my gosh, it's amazing!", they did not create rock and roll! It is rock and roll music. It's good rock and roll, that's all it is. They did not start something, they don't corner the market on anything. […] I think it's a shame, because it's a great media tool and it worked. Like, whoever thought of the word "grunge" should be rich by now because it's a great media trip, you know? But it's just all good rock and roll; Soundgarden, Nirvana, all these bands are just good rock and roll bands. People spend too much time categorizing what everything is. Just throw it on your turntable, throw it on you CD player or whatever you have and listen to it. Don't worry about what it is - no one cares, it doesn't matter anymore, you know? That's what should have happened, it shouldn't matter anymore what you are. There's so many, like, "fusion" everything and whatever that it shouldn't matter anymore, you know?”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Kyuss interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqai2XYiFyI, The Rivoli, Toronto (December 13, 1992)

People, Music, Thinking, Time

“We must be very careful when we speak of exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction…
In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague — and for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

VII. Far East
Memo PPS23 (1948)

People, World, Exercises, Problem

“Physicists can only talk to other physicists and economists to economists… sociologists often cannot even understand each other.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in Hans Adriaansens (1980) Talcott Parsons and the Conceptual Dilemma. p. 10
1980s

Understanding

“Let's take the people who have latent thoughts about maybe the United States isn't always right. They hear a song like "Give a Damn" and maybe it'll awaken them. If it makes you cross that bridge between apathy and effective participation, that's great. There's so much talk about the Drug Generation and songs about drugs. That's stupid. They aren't songs about drugs; they're about life. Music can play a huge part, because it's the international communicative force.”

Cass Elliot (1941–1974) American singer

The reference to "Give a Damn" could be to a song by Spanky & Our Gang or a subsequent song of the same title http://www.noelpaulstookey.com/01-06.html by Paul Stookey. Rolling Stone interview (1968)

Life, People, Stupidity, Music

“I have tried, in this book, to do three things. I try first to bring a greater awareness of the way in which the differences and the similarities in the bodies of human beings are the basis on which all our learnings about our sex, and our relationship to the other sex, are built. Talking about our bodies is a complex and difficult matter. We are so used to covering them up, to referring to them obliquely with slang terms or in a borrowed language to hiding even infants' sex membership under blue and pink ribbons. It is difficult to become aware of those things about us which have been, and will always be, patterned by our own particular modesties and reticences. We reject, and very rightly, catalogues of caresses arranged in frequency tables, or accounts of childhood that read like a hospital chart…”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 4-5

Books, Sex, Way, Learning

“I am not talking to you, you are bloody idiot, you are part of the establishment, you work for MI6”

Mohamed Al-Fayed (1933) Egyptian businessman

His response to a journalist calling him a liar.

Parting

“Yes, because that conceals their character. You don't know who you are talking to. Who you are dealing with. So, the face should be seen. That is even in Islam, even during the time of the holy Prophet Mohammed, women used to have bare faces. I mean women did not cover their faces.”

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom (1937) Maldivian politician, 3rd president of the Maldives

When asked by al jazeera journalist, Juliana Ruhfus (in an interview on 8 August 2007) that there is a law (in Maldives) that women are not allowed to wear a dress that only shows the eyes.
2007

Women, Time

“Keep clear of personalities in conversation. Talk of things, objects, thoughts. The smallest minds occupy themselves with persons. Do not needlessly report ill of others. As far as possible, dwell on the good side of human beings. There are family boards where a constant process of depreciating, assigning motives, and cutting up character, goes forward. They are not pleasant places. One who is healthy does not wish to dine at a dissecting table. There is evil enough in man, God knows. But it is not the mission of every young man and woman to detail and report it all. Keep the atmosphere as pure as possible, and fragrant with gentleness and charity.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 214.

God, Family, Motivation, Evil

“Mo: I miss the good old days. Smash the family! Smash the state!
Sydney: What about Clarice and Toni and Raffi? D'you want to smash their family?
Mo: Please, Sydney. I'm expressing an ideological conviction, not talking about real people.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#305, "The Baby Question" (1999), collected in Post-DTWOF (2000).
Dykes to Watch Out For

People, Family

“I don't know what Murdo's talking about.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

5-Nov-2005, Radio Derby
Phil responds to the director of football's desire to get more involved.

“[On David Cameron] When I heard this inherited multi-million ex-Etonian talking about a culture of entitlement, well, I'm sorry, but my irony meter went through the red and then exploded in a gale of bitter laughter. It actually went "HAA!" I was furious, because I've only just had a new irony metre installed after Rebekah Brooks complained about how she had been unfairly reported by the British press.”

Marcus Brigstocke (1973) comedian

The Now Show

Laughter

“I have not found this generation to be cynical or apathetic or selfish. They are as strong and as decent as any people that I have met. And I will say this, on my way down here I stopped at Bethesda Naval, and when you talk to the young kids that are there that have just been back from Iraq and Afghanistan, you don’t have the worry about the future that you hear from so many that are not a part of this generation but judging it from above.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

College of William & Mary Commencement Address (2004)

People, Way, Strong, Future

“Toto, I don't think we're talking white-socks-and-sandals any more.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds, 2011-03-01, pearls before swine, 2011-03-01 http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2011/02/pearls-before-swine.html, Torvalds contemplating his appearance at an Oscar Party. 2010s, 2011

Thinking

“That’s what this entire book is about. The basic recipe coordinates with organizing in the way outlined in Figure 5.3 (saying = enactment, selection = seeing what I say, retention = knowledge of what I said). The organism or group enacts equivocal raw talk, the talk is viewed retrospectively, sense is made of it, and this sense is then stored as knowledge in the retention process. The aim of each process has been to reduce equivocality and to get some idea of what has occurred.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 133-134, as cited in: Magala (1997, p. 321)

Books, Way, Idea, Knowledge

“The Government's policies of controlling local authority spending, cutting National Health spending and promoting private medicine and care for the elderly are a return to the workhouse. The only difference is that it is a capitalist workhouse rather than a discreet workhouse stuck away in the hills outside the town…Care for the elderly is an important issue. It cannot be left to volunteers, charities or to people going out with collecting boxes to see that old people are looked after properly. The issue is central to our demands for a caring society. That means an end to the cuts and an end to the policy of attacking those authorities that try to care for the elderly. Instead, there should be support for and recognition of those demands. Elderly people deserve a little more than pats on the head from Conservative Members. They deserve more than the platitudinous nonsense talked about handing the meals on wheels service over to the WRVS or any other volunteer who cares to run it. Instead, there should be a recognition that those who have worked all their lives to create and provide the wealth that the rest of us enjoy deserve some dignity in retirement. They do not deserve poverty, or to be ignored in their retirement, having to live worrying whether to put on the gas fire, or boil the kettle for a cup of tea, or whether they can afford a television licence or a trip out. They should not have to wonder whether the home help who has looked after them so long will be able to continue. The issue is crucial. The motion says clearly that care for the elderly comes before the promotion of policies that merely increase the wealth of those who are already the wealthiest in our society.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/feb/22/care-of-the-elderly in the House of Commons (22 February 1984). 1980s

People, Health, Home, Support

“Well I believe all participants of the six party talks should use their bilateral channels to send necessary messages to North Koreans. Some of us like China and Russia have more channels if you wish. Japan and South Korea have their own. And the United States could also help by stating their strong commitment to the negotiating process, to the six party talks, and I am glad that that's what we hear from Washington in response to the North Korean announcement.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

From Transcript, February (2005) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june05/lavrov_2-11.html

Strong, Help

“They say I used to scare pitchers just by strolling to the plate but those guys always had a remedy for me. Whenever they were afraid I'd knock one out of the park, they'd walk me and their worries would be over. But once Cobb got on base then their worries really began. He would upset not only the pitcher or catcher, but the infield as well by going from first to third on a sacrifice bunt, scoring from second on an infield out, taking two bases on an outfield fly and making delayed steals. Fans still talk about the home run I hit in the 1932 World Series off Charley Root of the Cubs after I pointed to the rightfield stands. Well, I once remember Cobb beating out four bunts down the third base line in one game against Billy Bradley, a wonderful third baseman for Cleveland. That was after Cobb warned Bradley he would bunt to him every time he got up. Another time Cobb warned Lou Criger, a great catcher with Boston, that he would steal second, third and home on him first chance he got. Well, the first time up Cobb walked and on three pitches stole second, third and home against the dumbfounded Criger.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "Ruth Considers Ty Cobb As Greatest of Players" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/55058790/

World, Guy, Home, Game

“Well sure, my sculptures are floor pieces. Each one, like any area on the surface of the earth, supports a column of air that weighs – what is it? – 14.7 pounds per square inch. So in a sense, that might represent a column. It's not an idea, it's a sense of something you know, a demarked place. Somehow I think I always thought of it going that way, rather than an idea of a narrowing triangle going to the center of the earth… I have nothing to do with Conceptual art [in contrast to his Physical Art, as Carl Andre called his sculpture art already in 1969]]. I'm not interested in ideas. If I were interested in ideas, I'd be in a field where what we think in is ideas… I don't really know what an idea is. One thing for me is that if I can frame something in language, I would never make art out of it. I make art out of things which cannot be framed in any other way. [quote from a talk with the audience, December 1969]”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 12

Art, Way, Quotes, Idea

“Everybody caught one another's eye with a 'Spot the loon' look when [Tony] Benn was talking. The show was probably true to life, since each minister had a vested interest in briefing the journalist chosen to play him. It's a sweet technique for getting at the truth, so I imagine someone will put a stop to it soon enough.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Wini und Wolf'
Essays and reviews, The Crystal Bucket (1982)

Life, Truth, Imagination

“When people talk too fast the content becomes as superfluous as the speed.”

Sten Nadolny book The Discovery of Slowness

p, 125
The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

People, Speed

“It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and whats happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there — with your eyes open — and lived to see it.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Love, Happiness, Way, Reality

“Let him make this challenge: "I'll release my tax returns when Barack Obama releases his college transcripts and the copy of his admission records to show whether he got any loans as a foreign student. When he releases that, talk to me about my tax returns."”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

2012-01-20
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
TV, quoted in * 2012-01-20
Matt Gertz
Huckabee Wants To Know If Obama Got College Loans "As A Foreign Student"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201201200016
2011-05-27
regarding criticism of presidential candidate Mitt Romney for refusing to release his tax returns

“Like the paranoid schizophrenic, the vatic personality pretends to be talking about the grandiose outside cosmic world, but he is really talking grandiosely in symbolic ways only about his narcissistic self and his inner world. The mystic pretends to discard his sensory self in order to meld with the cosmic Self; but in discarding his senses he abjures his only connection with the cosmos and re-encounters only himself. The realities he expounds are inside him.”

Weston La Barre (1911–1996) anthropologist

Source: Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion (1972), p. 265

World, Way, Reality, Sense

“In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

As quoted in The Best Advice Ever for Teachers (2001) by Charles McGuire and Diana Abitz, p. 57

Age

“Sometimes I want to joke but my English isn't perfect. Sometimes people are wondering what I'm talking about.”

Alexander Ovechkin (1985) Russian ice hockey player

Pierre Lebrun, The Canadian Press (September 6, 2006) "Caps' Ovechkin says he is not ready to wear the 'C'", The Chronicle Herald, p. D3.

People, Perfection

“The Prime Minister spent a lot of time painting to you a lurid picture of what would happen under a Labour Government in pursuit of what he called a Continental conception. He has forgotten that Socialist theory was developed by Robert Owen in Britain long before Karl Marx. He has forgotten that Australia, New Zealand, whose peoples have played so great a part in the war, and the Scandinavian countries have had Socialist Governments for years, to the great benefit of their peoples, with none of those dreadful consequences…When he talks of the danger of a secret police…he forgets that these things were actually experienced in this country only under the Tory Government of Lord Liverpool in the years of repression when the British people who had saved Europe from Napoleon were suffering deep distress. He has forgotten many things, including, when he talks of the danger of Labour mismanaging finance, his own disastrous record at the Exchequer over the gold standard.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (5 June 1945), quoted in The Times (6 June 1945), p. 2. Churchill had claimed in broadcast that a Labour government would have to rely on a Gestapo to carry out socialist policies
Leader of the Opposition

War, People, Secret, Suffering

“At a certain point I came to the conclusion that one of the murderous aspects of the AIDS crisis was that people were used to not talking about sexual experiences in detail. Gay sex for instance does not cause AIDS. There are certain acts that transmit a virus and there are certain other acts that don’t transmit a virus. If you don’t talk about what goes on in sexuality, so that you know what particular acts you’re dealing with, then I think you're, possibly in an indirect way but never-the-less in a very real way, contributing to an atmosphere of ignorance which the result is people die.”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

Spoken Arts interview on WBFO 88.7, 20th April 2000.

People, Sex, Way, Thinking

“Mr. Burke talked in very high terms of Dr. Adam Smith; praised the clearness and depth of his understanding, his profound and extensive learning, and the vast accession that had accrued to British literature and philosophy from these exertions, and described his heart as being equally good with his head and his manners as peculiarly pleasing. Mr. Smith, he said, told him, after they had conversed on subjects of political economy, that he was the only man, who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Robert Bisset, The Life of Edmund Burke. Volume II (London: G. Cawthorn, 1800), pp. 428-9
Undated

Communication, Literature, Understanding, Learning

“When we are honest – that's my saying – if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others. You see that is the nonsense of the last 15, 20 years [Albers refers here critically to American Abstract Expressionism ]. What is wrong there is that everyone wants to be different from the already different ones. And then they ended up all alike. And we are tired of that. And the youngsters feel that now. And they don't continue, you see. They see this will not last. These exaggerated performers always speak in the highest dramatic voice. And in order to achieve it get always drunk before you come to action. Sick. It's over. So I'm quite critical against many of my colleagues. It is not their self-expression. What makes me to be more than my neighbor only when I think I have to say something more than he can. That is self-disclosure. I once gave a talk in Chicago and right in the beginning I said – a lady came to me and said, 'You are against self-expression. And I am mad against you now.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

'And I'll stand upside down to demonstrate that, I said, 'Stop the sentence. You are self-disclosing; you are not self-expressing.'
Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Feeling, Thinking, Effort, Madness

“Watch the grown ups all twirling with the clock throughout the day. Watch them spinning through the hours while the time hands tick away. They talk and grip the world, as they would catch a falling knife. Reality deceives them ’neath amusing games of life.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Rhythm of Surrender"
A Different Drum (2004)

Life, World, Game, Reality

“A traveller returns home after a long journey, and he sees the old city gate and hears the women and children on both banks of the river talking his own dialect. Ah, is this not happiness?”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"Thirty-three Happy Moments"

Women, Happiness, Children, Travel

““Plants,” said he, “show no sign of interesting themselves in human affairs. We shall never get a rose to understand that five times seven are thirty-five, and there is no use in talking to an oak about fluctuations in the price of stocks. Hence we say that the oak and the rose are unintelligent, and on finding that they do not understand our business conclude that they do not understand their own. But what can a creature who talks in this way know about intelligence? Which shows greater signs of intelligence? He, or the rose and oak?”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 27

Way, Intelligence, Understanding, Business

“My favourite memories involve the actual process of writing sketches - just a few guys lounging around in a room talking nonsense, until suddenly an idea would start to coalesce, and you'd start nudging it toward fruition. I've never laughed so much before or since. Also, there were those very, very few nights where you'd be on a stage and some strange contract developed between performers and audience, and everything you did was funny. That was magical - and a direct visceral experience that you never really get from writing prose.”

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

On his time with the Cambridge Footlights
Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Guy, Idea, Memory, Night

“Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It's how true friends talk.”

Peggy Noonan (1950) American author and journalist

Peggy Noonan, in What I Saw at the Revolution : A Political Life in the Reagan Era (1990), p. 321

“Up to this time the argument of the abolitionists, who since 1833 had been storming the national conscience — for they knew the real citadel of a nation — with the assertion that slavery was an absolute wrong, had been met by the reply, 'Yes, yes; we know all about that. Of course it's a great wrong. The South agrees to that. It's dreadful sorry about it — but it's got the nasty thing, and it says if we'll only let it alone it will settle itself. Slavery is one of those things that work out themselves. The more you talk the worse it is. Besides, it's their own affair; we've nothing to do with it. Let 'em alone! Let 'em alone!”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Time

“This city is a completely female city. Female town. Beijing is male. All rough and politics. Shanghai is more delicate. Money talks. Beautiful. I had enough rough. I need details. Specially because (I am) a lady. I need city.”

Jin Xing

Cited in: SanSan Kwan, Kinesthetic City: Dance and Movement in Chinese Urban Spaces, 2013 p. xxx; Talking about Shanghai
Text originate from a French-made documentary, where "Jin herself associated her (definitely female) identity with the city" of Shanghai.

Money, Beauty

“When I see a disposition amongst you to trade in humanity, I will not question your motives, I will not deny that it is really felt; but this I tell you, that if you would give force and grace to your professions of humanity, it must not be confined to the negro at the Antipodes, nor to the building of churches, nor the extension of the Church Establishment, nor to occasional visits to factories to talk sentiment over factory children—you must untax the people's bread. Whilst you retain that law, which raises rents but does not raise wages, you may be humane, kind and beneficent, but your benevolence and humanity, more showy than substantial, will soon become a mockery and a bye-word.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1841/sep/24/supply-distress-of-the-country in the House of Commons (24 September 1841) against the Corn Laws. 1840s

Children, People, Law, Motivation

“New discord has arisen in Europe of late years from the fact that Germany is not satisfied with the result of the late War. I have indicated several times that Germany got off lightly after the Great War. I know that that is not always a fashionable opinion, but the facts repudiate the idea that a Carthaginian peace was in fact imposed upon Germany. No division was made of the great masses of the German people. No portion of Germany inhabited by Germans was detached, except where there was the difficulty of disentangling the population of the Silesian border. No attempt was made to divide Germany as between the northern and southern portions which might well have tempted the conquerors at that time. No State was carved out of Germany. She underwent no serious territorial loss, except the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, which she herself had seized only 50 years before. The great mass of the Germans remained united after all that Europe had passed through, and they are more vehemently united to-day than ever before. You may talk of the War indemnity; what has happened there? I suppose that the Germans paid, in round terms, £1,000,000,000. But they had borrowed £2,000,000,000 at the same time, and there are no signs of their paying back.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1933/apr/13/adjournment-easter-1#column_2790 in the House of Commons (13 April 1933) The 1930s

War, People, Peace, Idea

“Only a little while now and we shall be again together and with us those other noble and well-beloved souls gone before. I am sure I shall meet you and them; that you and I shall talk of a thousand things and of that unforgettable day and of all that followed it; and that we shall clearly see that all were parts of an infinite plan which was wholly wise and good.”

Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) prominent Canadian psychiatrist in the late 19th century

Dedication
Cosmic Consciousness (1901)

Soul, Parting

“Honey the party went away quickly, but thats the trouble with ticking and talking.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"The Party"
Actor (2009)

“Rab said he thought that the good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history. He had tried earnestly and long to persuade Halifax to accept the Premiership, but he had failed. He believed this sudden coup of Winston and his rabble was a serious disaster and an unnecessary one: the 'pass has been sold' by Mr. C[hamberlain], Lord Halifax and Oliver Stanley. They had weakly surrendered to a half-breed American whose main support was that of inefficient but talkative people of a similar type.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

John Colville's diary entry for 10 May 1940, The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries. 1939-1955 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), p. 122.

People, History, Support

“The only thing I'll say in defense of basically the entire conservative media is that, except for a few talk radio hosts, my twitter feed, I guess Brietbart, and Daily Caller is everyone seems to dislike Richard Spencer. He is you know our equivalent of Black Lives Matter. Apparently you know a gay showboater who just wants lots of media attention.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Ann Coulter: Charlottesville Ralliers Could Have Been ‘Little Old Ladies’ Listening To ‘Civil War Buffs’
2017-08-17
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ann-coulter-charlottesville-ralliers-could-have-been-little-old-ladies-listening-to-civil-war-buffs/
2017

“Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody,
I have some money 'cause I just got paid.
How I wish I had someone to talk to,
I'm in an awful way.”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

Another Saturday Night
Song lyrics, Ain't That Good News (1964)

Money, Way, Night

“Clerks spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In Mallrats the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types. The year that Clerks played at the Cannes Film Festival, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers. Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mallrats-1995 of Mallrats (20 October 1995) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Happiness, Sense, Time

“Despite the undoubted attachment of most of its people to some form of electoral politics, Pakistan remains a nation built around an army. Paradoxically, even the citizens who most talk of democracy often look to the army as potential savior – a kind of deus ex machina that, at crucial moments, can intervene to bring the nation out of an impasse. In just over half a century as a state, Pakistan has experienced four military coups – each initially welcomed by a majority of the people.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Citizen Musharraf" http://nypost.com/2007/11/29/citizen-musharraf/, New York Post (November 29, 2007). New York Post

People, Democracy

“You put out a funny podcast, you talk about bak chor mee. I will say mee siam mai hum.”

Lee Hsien Loong (1952) Prime Minister of Singapore

National Day Rally, 2006

“All of them who need to tell ladies to stop talking about sports and stay on the sidelines, because we are baby-making machines.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, FEMINISM

Sport, Baby

“You should be stronger than me,
But instead you're longer than frozen turkey,
Why'd you always put me in control?
All I need is for my man to live up to his role,
Always wanna talk it through- I'm ok,
Always have to comfort you every day,
But that's what I need you to do - are you gay?”

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter

Stronger Than Me
Song lyrics, Frank (2003)

“He (Gauis Gracchus) was a political incendiary. Not only was the hundred years' revolution which dates from him, so far as it was one man's work, the work of Gaius Gracchus, but he was above all the true founder of that terrible civic proletariat flattered and paid by the classes above it, which was through it aggregation in the capital - the natural consequence of the largesses of corn - at once utterly demoralized and made conscious of its power, and which - with its pretensions, sometimes stupid, sometimes knavish, and its talk of the sovereignty of the people - lay like an incubus for five hundred years upon the Roman commonwealth and only perished along with it. And yet again, this greatest of political transgressors was the regenerator of his country. There is scarce a fruitful idea in Roman monarchy, which is not traceable to Gaius Gracchus.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 3

People, Stupidity, Idea, Nature

“The BNP isn't about selling out its ideas, which are your ideas too, but we are determined to sell them. Basically, that means to use saleable words – such as freedom, identity, security, democracy. […]
Once we're in a position where we control the British broadcasting media, then perhaps one day the British people might change their mind and say, 'yes, every last one must go'. But if you hold that out as your sole aim to start with, you're not going to get anywhere. So, instead of talking about racial purity, we talk about identity. […]
There's a difference between selling out your ideas and selling your ideas, and the British National Party isn't about selling out its ideas, which are your ideas too, but we are determined now to sell them, and that means basically to use the saleable words, as I say, freedom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can criticise them. Nobody can come at you and attack you on those ideas. They are saleable.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

– talking to the American Friends of the BNP —

People, Democracy, Idea, Freedom

“Paul says: "Sell your cloak and buy a sword". This is in the Bible. The Bible is our tool box. When she [Marina Silva] says I was wrong while talking about armament, there is this passage in the Bible. That's because in that time there was no firearms, otherwise it certainly would be a.50 machine gun or a rifle.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Misattributing to Paul a saying of Jesus (Luke 22:36). Bolsonaro diz que Bíblia prega armamento https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/2018/08/18/3046-bolsonaro-diz-que-biblia-prega-armamento. O Globo (18 August 2018).

Time, Box

“After four years of sitting through lectures, I have a feeling you’re not in the mood for another one. What I have learned about graduation speeches is that they’re too long and rarely remembered. So I’ll keep this short. I just can’t attest to how memorable it will be. I’ve also learned that it’s important to refer to someone associated with the University. So I picked one, an SMU trustee, who by the way is not here, Reverend Mark Craig. Now, I asked Mark to deliver the sermon at the First United Methodist Church in Austin before my second inauguration as Governor of Texas. I still remember his Fort Worth twang as he talked about Moses. God called Moses to action, and Moses repeatedly found excuses not to act. 'Who am I that I should go to Pharoah, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt? Oh, my Lord, I pray, send some other person. I have sheep to tend. And the people won't believe me. I'm not a very good speaker.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

God, People, Way, Feeling

“What if everyone goes on the endless road
Sooner or later
Over the clouds to the sky
Be sure to wait for me.
And then, we will talk away
About our countless memories.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Untitled ~For Her
Lyrics, Guilty

Memory, Waiting

“We tend to think of [Hitler] as an idiot because the central tenet of his ideology was idiotic – and idiotic, of course, it transparently is. Anti-Semitism is a world view through a pinhole: as scientists say about a bad theory, it is not even wrong. Nietzsche tried to tell Wagner that it was beneath contempt. Sartre was right for once when he said that through anti-Semitism any halfwit could become a member of an elite. But, as the case of Wagner proves, a man can have this poisonous bee in his bonnet and still be a creative genius. Hitler was a destructive genius, whose evil gifts not only beggar description but invite denial, because we find it more comfortable to believe that their consequences were produced by historical forces than to believe that he was a historical force. Or perhaps we just lack the vocabulary. Not many of us, in a secular age, are willing to concede that, in the form of Hitler, Satan visited the Earth, recruited an army of sinners, and fought and won a battle against God. We would rather talk the language of pseudoscience, which at least seems to bring such events to order. But all such language can do is shift the focus of attention down to the broad mass of the German people, which is what Goldhagen has done, in a way that, at least in part, lets Hitler off the hook – and unintentionally reinforces his central belief that it was the destiny of the Jewish race to be expelled from the Volk as an inimical presence.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

God, People, Age, World

“This terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it — because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2006, State of the Union (January 2006)

People, Waiting, Help, Country

“These men are all talk; What is needed is action”

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

action!
Remarks at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention (May 1859), quoted in William Lloyd Garrison by Wendell and Francis Garrison.

Men

“I think our motto should be, post-9-11, "raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Comments at a CPAC Conference (10 February 2006), as quoted in * Max Blumenthal
Ann Coulter at CPAC on "Ragheads" and Assassinating Bill Clinton (and Dr. Bill Frist's Diagnosis)
The Huffington Post
2006-02-10
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/ann-coulter-at-cpac-on-r_b_15434.html
2006

Thinking

“But I think people, especially white people, have to come to understand that the language of the ghetto is a language of its own, and as the party- whose members for the most part come from the ghetto- seeks to talk to the people, it must speak the people's language.”

Bobby Seale (1936) American activist

Interview with The Guardian (February 1970)

People, Understanding, Thinking, Parting

“Whatever our constitutional arrangements and no matter how well off we are, there will always be a need for Scotland's citizens to talk about their problems. Therefore, we will always need independent, reliable and accurate advice to help guide them at certain points in their lives.”

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

Citizens Advice Bureaux (August 15, 2007)

Problem, Help

“John Rawls says that justice is the 'first virtue' of social institutions, meaning that it is more fundamental than any other, and that we cannot expect individuals to accept social regulation, and engage in social co-operation unless the terms on which society operates are seen as reasonably just. To talk as though Plato and Aristotle saw justice as a matter of the terms of social and political co-operation may suggest a modern and individualist perspective foreign to both. Yet it is not wholly misleading.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Justice (1993)

Justice

“When we're trying to solve difficult national issues its sometimes necessary to talk to adversaries as well as friends. Historians have a word for this: diplomacy.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Speech at Harvard forum (April 11, 2007)
2000s

“Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond? You never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud, and what changes a darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things—what eternity is, for example—I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Frankenstein, trying to explain to his fiancee why he experiments the way he does
Frankenstein (1931)

People, Star, Thinking, Tree

“I don’t like coming to Seattle much. I talked to [Chris] Cornell about it not that long ago. And Jerry Cantrell. None of us like it. It is beautiful, objectively. The arboretum is great. But it freaks me out for obvious reasons. I didn’t really live there. I lived behind a gate. I would try to go up to [Pike Place] Market. My big expedition would be Urban Outfitters and the yoga store.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On living in Seattle in the 1990s, The Seattle Times http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/courtney-love-lsquoit-was-war-the-time-after-kurt-diedrsquo/ (14 July 2013) 2006–2013

Beauty

“I don't want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard.
I just want someone
that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are.

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Just the Way You Are.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Way

“We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it’s hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!”

Betty Friedan (1921–2006) American activist

As quoted in People magazine (7-14 March 1994), p. 49.

Women, Men, People, Thinking

“An earlier paper (Pask, 1976) introduced conversational techniques, some involving a human participant in dialogue with a student, others involving a mechanically or computer implemented 'participant' through which the student 'talks to himself' under restrictions imposed by the device. In either case (human or mechanical monitoring) the subject matter of a conversation is represented in a liberally conceived, but standard, fashion, as a conversational domain consisting in an entailment structure (embodying one or more description schemes and indicating the many ways in which one topic may be known in terms of or derived from others) and behaviour graphs (one for each topic in the domain) that prescribe what may be done to model or explain the topic in question. Within this framework, the conversational techniques secure, or approximate, a standard condition for experiments on learning.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Styles and Strategies of Learning (1976), p. 128: Pask is referring to the article: Pasc, G. (1976). "Conversational techniques in the study and practice of education". In: British Journal of educational Psycholy, Vol 46, p. 12-25.

Way, Fashion, Question, Learning

“Young people wonder how the adult world can be so boring. The secret is that it is not boring to adults because they have learned to enjoy simple things like covert malice at one another's expense. This is why they talk so much about the value of human understanding and sympathy - it has a certain rarity value in their world.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

People, Secret, World, Understanding

“Monckton Milnes was a social power in London, and of course he himself affected social eccentricity, challenging ridicule with the indifference of one who knew himself to be the first wit in London, and a maker of men — of a great many men. A word from him went far. An invitation to his breakfast-table went farther. Behind his almost Falstaffian mask and laugh of Silenus, he carried a fine, broad, and high intelligence which no one questioned. As a young man he had written verses, which some readers thought poetry, and which were certainly not altogether prose. Later, in Parliament he made speeches, chiefly criticised as too good for the place and too high for the audience. Socially, he was one of two or three men who went everywhere, knew everybody, talked of everything.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men, Intelligence, Question, Indifference

“As far as I can see, this is a system that has enriched multiple companies and that pays and fires teachers with a cattle birthing formula, confuses children with talking pineapples, and has the same kind of rules regarding transparency as Brad Pitt had for Fight Club.”

John Oliver (1977) English comedian

Last Week Tonight: Standardized Testing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lyURyVz7k Last Week Tonight: Standardized Testing (3 May 2015) Last Week Tonight (2014&ndash;present)

Children, Birth, Teachers, Fight

“I still have the butterflies whenever I talk in public. It's a healthy feeling, instead of feeling cocky. You got to think/guard about what you're gonna say, you don't end up being nonchalant about what you say and end up regretting it later on. It keeps you in check.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Jude Morte, "Tell It like It is", Manifesto, 2008, p. 71, ISSN 1908-6229.
2008

Feeling, Thinking

“Oh, communism! That was a burning issue. It was an outrageous issue. To be termed a communist would damage your whole family, damage your whole world — your friends wouldn’t talk to you. I’m talking about other people — because I wouldn’t go near the stuff. Sure, I was against the reds. I became a witch hunter. My enemies were the commies — I called them commies. In fact, Granny Goodness was a commie, Doubleheader was a commie.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

TCJ Archive, "Jack Kirby Interview" http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/5/, The Comics Journal, (February 1990, posted May 23, 2011).

People, World, Family, Communication

“I dream of building a community of dancers in a forsaken place amidst nature. A place where nothing exists, except dance. A place where you breathe, eat, sleep, dream, talk, imagine - dance. A place where all the five senses can be refined to perfection. A place where dancers drop negative qualities such as jealousy, small-mindedness, greed and malice to embrace their colleagues as sisters and support each other in their journey towards becoming dancers of merit. A place called Nrityagram.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On her dance institution called Nityagram quoted in The Dream, 14 January 2014, Nritygarm Organization http://www.nrityagram.org/soul/dream/dream.htm,

Jealousy, Dreams, Imagination, Communication