Quotes about tell (7229 quotes, page 29)

“The Adobe flash plug-in is non-free software, and people should not install it, or suggest installing it, or even tell people it exists.”

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

On the OpenBSD mailing list (14 December 2007) http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119762874930534&w=2
2000s

People

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Life , Wisdom , Women , Men

“I am not arguing with you — I am telling you.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Propositions, 2
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

“Nobody tells me what to do in my book. I can do whatever I wish and to whomever I want. It is fun for me. It calms the chaos inside my mind. That is why I write.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

In the news

Books

“I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

September 14, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

Life , Men , Lying , Sincerity

“Why should I tell you where I am going to get funds from? If I were to do that then all the vested interests would get alerted. You must be aware that railways are full of such elements and my fight is against them.”

Lalu Prasad Yadav (1948) Indian politician

When an interviewer asked him from where is he going to get resources to implement the tall promises that he made in the railway budget of 2004. ([Railway Budget, The Times of India, July 7, 2004]).

Fight

“The Yugoslavs accuse us of allegedly being chauvinists, of interfering in their internal affairs, and of demanding a rectification of the Albanian -Yugoslav borders. A number of our friends think and imply that we Albanian communists swim in such waters. We tell our friends who think thus that they are grossly mistaken. We are not chauvinists, we have neither demanded nor demand rectification of boundaries. But what we demand and will continually demand from the Titoites, and we will expose them to the end for this, is that they give up perpetrating the crime of genocide against the Albanian minority in Kosova and Metohia, that they give up the white terror against the Albanians of Kosova, that they give up driving the Albanians from their native soil and deporting them 'en masse' to Turkey. We demand that the rights of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia should be recognized according to the Constitution of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Is this chauvinist or Marxist?”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

People , Thinking , Water

“At present there is an extremely exaggerated formation of groups (students on the School of Art in Vitebsk) around 'trend'; there are 1. young people following Malevich and 2. young people following me. We both belong to the left-wing artistic movement, although we have different ideas about ends and means. Obviously it would take too long to talk about this problem now… But there is one thing I will tell you: Although I was born in Russia - and what is more: in the "settlement territory" – I was trained abroad and am all the more sensitive to everything that is taking place here in the field of art (the fine arts). The memory of the splendour of the original is much to painful for me.. [to live – crossed out]”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Chagall's letter to Pavel Davidovitch Ettering, 2 April, 1920, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 73
1920's

Pain , People , School , Art

“The guy has been there. What he tells us is not just what he believes deep down, but what he knows, because he has been through it.”

Larry Bird (1956) basketball player and coach

Chris Mullin — reported in John Brennan (May 30, 1999) "Pacers: Timing Is On Our Side", The Record, p. S1.
About

Guy

“Fear of emotional contact with men out of fear of being a sexual suspect makes boys, ironically, even more powerless before girls. Homophobia is like telling the United States it will be a sissy nation if it doesn’t get all its oil from OPEC.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 128.

Men , Fear , Girl , Boy

“We know that the enemies of our civilization and of Arab-Muslim civilization have emerged from what is actually a root cause. The root cause is the political slum of client states from Saudi Arabia through Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere, that has been allowed to dominate the region under U. S. patronage, and uses people and resources as if they were a gas station with a few flyblown attendants. To the extent that this policy, this mentality, has now changed in the administration, to the extent that their review of that is sincere and the conclusions that they draw from it are sincere, I think that should be welcomed. It's a big improvement to be intervening in Iraq against Saddam Hussein instead of in his favor. I think it makes a nice change. It's a regime change for us too. Now I'll state what I think is gonna happen. I've been in London and Washington a lot lately and all I can tell you is that the spokesmen for Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush walk around with a look of extraordinary confidence on their faces, as if they know something that when disclosed, will dissolve the doubts, the informational doubts at any rate, of people who wonder if there is enough evidence. [Mark Danner: It's amazing they've been able to keep it to themselves for so long. ] I simply say, I have two reasons for confidence. I know perfectly well that there are many people who would not be persuaded by this evidence even if it was dumped on their own doorstep, because the same people, many of the same people, didn't believe that it was worth fighting in Afghanistan even though the connection between the Taliban and Al Qaeda was as clear as could possibly be. So I know that. There's a strong faction of the so-called peace movement that is immune to evidence and also incapable of self criticism, of imagining what these countries would be like if the advice of the peaceniks has been followed. I also made some inquiries of my own, and I think I know what some of these disclosures will be. But, as a matter of fact I think we know enough. And what will happen will be this: The President will give an order, there will then occur in Iraq a show of military force like nothing probably the world has ever seen. It will be rapid and accurate and overwhelming enough to deal with an army or a country many times the size of Iraq, even if that country possessed what Iraq does not, armed forces in the command structure willing to obey and be the last to die for the supreme leader. And that will be greeted by the majority of Iraqi people and Kurdish people as a moment of emancipation, which will be a pleasure to see, and then the hard work of the reconstitution of Iraqi society and the repayment of our debt — some part of our debt to them — can begin. And I say, bring it on.”

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

"How Should We Use Our Power: A Debate on Iraq" http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/03/03-01hitchensdanner-qa.html with Mark Danner at UC Berkeley (2003-01-28}: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2003

People , Pleasure , World , Peace

“I thought Mr. Millward never would cease telling us that he was no tea-drinker, and that it was highly injurious to keep loading the stomach with slops to the exclusion of more wholesome sustenance, and so give himself time to finish his fourth cup.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. IX : A Snake in the Grass; Gilbert Markham

Time , Tea

“You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.”

Adrian Mitchell (1932–2008) British writer

"To Whom It May Concern", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).

Women

“Just as the number one never can be reduced to zero, once we act or speak, our action or speech is never completely erased. An old oriental saying tells us, "sow good, and the harvest will be good. Sow evil and reap evil". We must understand that everything we do comes back to ourselves. Therefore before wishing for our own happiness and welfare and that of our children, we must do good in secret. To do good in secret means to act without seeking attention and praise, to act without any hope of reward. This is called "intoku."”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

Among the various ways of performing intoku, to walk the way of the universe and to lead others along this way is best.
20. Intoku - good done in secret
Ki Sayings (2003)

Children , Secret , Hope , Way

“Thud. My eyes are open. It is four-thirty in the morning, one morning, and my dry eyes click in their sockets, awake before the birds. There is no light. The eye strains for logic, some play of form. I have been dreaming of wind. The tree outside my window stands silent. I listen to the breathing of the man lying beside me. I know where I am. I am awake. I am alive. Am I tethered to earth only by this fragile breath? A strawful of breath at best. Yet this is the breath that patients beg, their hands gripping the edges of mattresses; this is the breath that wrestles trees, that brings down all the leaves in the Third Act. We know where the car is parked. We know, word-for-word, the texts of plays. We have spoken, in proximity to one another, over years, sentences, hundreds of thousands of sentences—bright, grave, fallible, comic, perishable—perhaps eternal? I don’t know. Where does the wind go? When will the light come? We will have hotcakes for breakfast. How can I protect this...? My church teaches me I cannot. And I believe it. I turn the pillow to its cool side. Then rage fills me, against the cubist necessity of having to arrange myself comically against orthodoxy, against having to wonder if I will offend, against theology that devises that my feeling for him, more than for myself, is a vanity. My brown paradox: The church that taught me to understand love, the church that taught me well to believe love breathes—also tells me it is not love I feel, at four in the morning, in the dark, even before the birds cry. Of every hue and caste am I.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Love , Dreams , Cars , Feeling

“In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done."”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177

People , World , Forgiveness , Parent

“If you hand a man a lemon and tell him that its sourness lies outside the lemon, he will think you are joking. Yet, with a perfectly straight face, that same man will tell you that his sour life is caused by external events. When will man learn that he is the cause of his own feelings for either happiness or anxiety?”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

700 Inspiring Guides to a New Life

Life , Feeling , Thinking , Learning

“Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Karna looking up to Kunti asked her, in: p. 232.
The God of Small Things

“It is not the business of socialists to help the younger and stronger robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow all of them. To be able to do this, socialists must first of all tell the people the truth, namely, that this war is, in three respects, a war between slave-holders with the aim of consolidating slavery.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Socialism and War (1914), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

War , People , Truth , Business

“We hired truly great people and gave them the room to do great work. A lot of companies […] hire people to tell them what to do. We hire people to tell us what to do. We figure we're paying them all this money; their job is to figure out what to do and tell us.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

The management philosophy here really is to give people enough rope to hang themselves. We hire people to tell us what to do. That's what we pay them for.
1990s
Source: Steve Jobs, 1996, Fresh Air radio interview by Terry Gross, npr.org http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-science-is-a-liberal-art, audio 26:30/31:05
Source: Steve Jobs 1982, interview in InfoWorld March 4, 1982, p.15 books.google https://books.google.fr/books?id=gT4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA15&dq=rope

Money , People

“I can't tell you how much it means to have Craig and my mom here tonight. Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us, just as I've felt his presence in every grace-filled moment of my life. At 6-foot-6, I've often felt like Craig was looking down on me too … literally. But the truth is, both when we were kids and today, he wasn't looking down on me. He was watching over me.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, Democratic National Convention speech (2008)

Life , Truth , Feeling , Moms

“3072. Thou may'st extract an Antidote out of a Viper, and Good out of an Enemy. An Enemy will tell thee more truly of thy Imperfections, than the best of Friends will adventure to do, or ourselves (being partial to ourselves)will be able to discern : And this may be apply'd as precious Balm, to heal the Wounds our Folly, or Oversight have given our Reputation, by guarding our Actions for the future. And this is far better, than to be flattered into Pride, and Carelessness.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Future

“When you tell people that you are studying maths at uni, they are like, “Oh …”. Especially a blonde Essex girl.”

Rachel Riley (1986) television presenter

Interview, The Observer, 12 Oct 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/12/rachel-riley-countdown-stop-saying-girls-arent-good-at-maths

People , Girl , Study

“If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;
God to their cares and fears will set no bound.
What would content you? Who can tell?
Ye fear so much to lose what you have got
As if ye liked it well.
Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

“Of Greatness”

God , Pleasure , Fear

“I'd kick it, and I'd say 'You knob-head'. - Karl tells Ricky his response to being poisoned by an octopus.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 6
On Nature

“I am a woman: tell me not of fame.”

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

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

“Jesus' Wife: "And where have YOU been for the past three days, Mr. Winemaker?"
Jesus Christ: "It's okay, I'll tell you… Not that's important or anything, but I was DEAD!!! I'M IN A FUCKIN' GRAVE OUTSIDE OF TOWN! I'M FIGHTIN' DEATH, HELL, DECOMPOSURE! I'M CHANGIN' SPIRITUAL FORM, ABOUT TO ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD, AND I GO "WAIT A SECOND! I GOTTA GO BACK BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHERE I'VE BEEN!"”

Sam Kinison (1953–1992) American comedian

the argument Jesus Christ has with his wife following his return home after the Resurrection, Louder than Hell.

Death , God , Hell , Waiting

“It is not the same thing. You are perhaps not lying, but you are not telling the truth.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 1
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

Truth , Lying

“All of us have been in situations where we've lost our confidence, even the greatest leaders in the world. We are at the end of the day human — I have no problem telling you, yeah [I have days when] I think, you know, What am I doing? Remember why you're doing what you're doing; talk yourself off the ledge. You know you have to become your own best counselor because really no one is going to take the time and the energy to understand your problems quite like you can.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

World , Confidence , Understanding , Problem

“Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus

Death , God , War

“But tell me, black and white, may they be used or not, are they forbidden fruit? You... think that when the shadows are dark, ay, black, that it is all wrong then, don't you? I don't think so... Rembrandt and Hals, didn't they use black? And Velasquez???”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, Autumn 1885; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 428) p. 31
1880s, 1885

Thinking

“I can also tell you on the Internet in China, you can have access to a lot of postings that are quite critical about the government. It is exactly through reading these critical opinions on the Internet that we try to locate problems and further improve our work. I don't think a system or a government should fear critical opinions or views. Only by heeding those critical views would it be possible for us to further improve our work and make further progress. I frequently browse the Internet to learn about a situation.”

Wen Jiabao (1942) former Premier of the People's Republic of China

Wen Jiabao (2008) cited in: Transcript of interview with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, 28 September 2008, CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/09/29/chinese.premier.transcript/index.html,

Fear , Problem , Thinking , Learning

“Hey, when Vicky sends you the picture, send it to me. Listen to me, listen to me, Vicky, I don't wanna hurt you. I know you got a condition, and I don't want you to feel bad, but I'm gonna die before you have a toothache and that's the truth, you understand. I got nothing. I got no group picture. I got group picture. Let me tell you where I got the group pictures from. I got a group picture from Maria DeMaria. She sent me all her four grandchildren together in a picture. I got it from Georgia Corozza, she sent me her group picture. You want me to go on. I didn't get nothing from mine.”

John Gotti (1940–2002) American crime boss

To his daughter
The Smoking Gun videos (2004)

Truth , Feeling , Understanding , Hurt

“Terrible things have happened. The de Witts are killed.”
“Is this so terrible? They have been your foes from the moment of your birth, and though out of power would have continued to conspire against you.”
“Sagi, if we must needs kill our opponents then civilization is a chimera. Governments are formed so that men may disagree without murder, and I tell you true, I loathe a mob more than anything.”
“They acted out of love for you.”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

“That does not comfort me.”
Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 15 (p. 195)

Love , Men , Birth

“We want to tell American parents that they and they alone have total power to control every hour of television programming that comes into their home.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

As quoted in "US TV industry plans June ad campaign on decency" Reuters news agency (24 April 2006) http://www.entertainment-news.org/breaking/50538/us-tv-industry-plans-june-ad-campaign-on-decency.html

Home , Parent

“Theories of modernisation are cod-scientific projections of Enlightenment values. They tell us nothing about the future. But they do help us to understand the present. They show the lingering power of the Christian faith that history is a moral drama, a tale of progress or redemption, in which - despite everything we know of it - morality rules the world.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: The myth of modernisation (p. 174)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , Faith , History , Understanding

“Yes,” he said. “You see, I, too, have been seeing a lot of things, now that I’ve been spending so much time at the hospital.” He took a deep breath. “One night I got up and went down the hallway to see this woman who was crying. She was an elderly woman and the doctors didn’t know what to do for her. She was dying. I held her hand and stroked her forehead like she was a child. She immediately calmed down and was able to pass over in her sleep so peacefully. “The night nurse was furious, and the next morning she told the doctors what I’d done. They, too, became upset, telling me I didn’t have the authority to visit other patients. That poor nurse and the doctors, they just weren’t prepared to accept the simple truth that they aren’t in control. No one is in control, Mundo. We’re all just God’s guests for a short time.” I don’t know why, but I now asked, “Joseph, are you dying?”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

He looked at me straight in the eyes. “Yes, Mundo,” he said, “I’m dying.”
Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

God , Truth , Sleep , Time

“I love computer graphics, but every system I've seen to try to turn programming into pictures has lost that syntactic element. There's something about syntax that makes it very precise for reading. I love photography. A photograph will tell a story. But words tell a story even better. Words are more versatile. You can paint a verbal picture that's much richer than you can photograph.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), To Plan or Not To Plan

Love , Reading , Painting

“He wanted to tell me that he thought he finally knew why Christ said to call no man Fool. Christ had said it, Seymour thought I'd want to know, because there are no fools. Dopes, yes — fools, no.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Fools , Christ

“We are touring the Ozarks. Here is an abandoned field in which the ragweed is sparse and short. Does this tell us anything about why the mortgage was foreclosed? About how long ago? Would this field be a good place to look for quail? Does short ragweed have any connection with the human story behind yonder graveyard? If all the ragweed in this watershed were short, would that tell us anything about the future of floods in the steam? About the future prospects for bass or trout?”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Natural History: The Forgotten Science" [1938]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 62.
1930s

Future

“After three years spent in a small goldsmith factory, I had nothing left to learn. A colleague who was looking for a new job as goldsmith, tells me: look I went to a small shop, figured that they do not even use the electric drill, but they make holes with bows, like the primitives. I understood that this was the place for me.”

James Rivière (1949) Italian Jewellery and sculptor

Marta Bravi in : [s.n.] (2009). " Dalla bottega al Vaticano con i gioielli per il Papa http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/bottega-vaticano-i-gioielli-papa.html" in ilgiornale.it

Learning

“Monsieur, sit down; listen to me. I am not a heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am not unchristian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you; I would not trouble your faith; you believe in God and Christ and the Bible, and so do I.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Chapter XXXVI: The Apple of Discord

God , Faith , Heart , Christ

“My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick; it'll do anything — absolutely anything — to communicate and to win the viewer over. Even the most unsophisticated people are not threatened by it; they aren't threatened that this is something they have no understanding of. They can look at it and they can participate with it. And also somebody who has been very highly educated in art and deals with more esoteric areas can also view it and find that the work is open as far as being something that wants to add more to our culture. The work wants to meet the needs of' the people. It tries to bring down all the barriers that block people From their culture. that shield and hide them. It tells them to embrace the moment instead of always feeling that they're being indulged by things that they do not participate in. It tells them to believe in something and to eject their will. The idea of St. John and baptism right now is that there are greater things to come. And it's about embracing guilt and shame and moving forward instead of letting this negative society always thwart us — always a more negative society, always more negative.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

Partly cited in: Linda Weintraub, Arthur Coleman Danto, Thomas McEvilley. Art on the edge and over: searching for art's meaning in contemporary society, 1970s-1990s. Art Insights, Inc., 1996. p. 201; And cited in Kristine Stiles, ‎Peter Howard Selz (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. p. 381
"From Full Phantom Five," 1988

People , Education , Art , Feeling

“They’re everything that’s wrong in this instant-coffee and microwave age. ‘I want it now.’ There used to be that romantic image of going off to Tibet and climbing the mountain to speak to the wise man. And when you got to the top, he could tell you the truths of the universe. Now people wanna take a helicopter to the top—or e-mail him!”

Malcolm Azania book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 34 “On Good, Evil, Invisible Hands, and the Wind” (p. 193)

People , Truth , Age , Mountain

“Cosmopolitan is the best-selling magazine to single women. Cosmo tells single women how they can get a man to commit and achieve her primary fantasy of better homes and gardens. It’s the single female’s version of Playboy. Pornography is the male primary fantasy--access to as many beautiful women as desired without risk of rejection--at a price he can afford!”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 18.

Women , Beauty , Home

“Everyone has to do something for survival, but that something does not have to define the real character of a person. I am what my head tells me I am. I am what my feelings say I am. I do not depend on anyone’s approval.”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

Feeling , Dependency , Personality

“Q - If your children ever ask you, “why do bad things happen to good people?” what will you tell them?”

Dana Gould (1964) Comedian and comedy writer

Children , People

“It seems to me that maybe,
It pretty much always means no
So don't tell me you might just let it go
And often times we're lazy
It seems to stand in my way
Cause no one no not no one
Likes to be let down”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Flake.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Way , Time

“These modern productions are all very well,
But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell,
That moment of mystery
When I made history
As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Gus: The Theatre Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

History

“Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 52
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“The start of work means the end to freedom, but also to doubt, intensity and wayward desires. The accountant’s ten thousand possibilities have been reduced to an agreeable handful. She has a business card which she hands over in meetings and which tells other people—and, more meaningfully perhaps, reminds her—that she is a Business Unit Senior manager, rather than a vaporous transient consciousness in an incidental universe. How satisfying it is to be held in check by the assumptions of colleagues, instead of being forced to contemplate, in the loneliness of the early hours, all that one might have been and now never will be. … Life is no longer mysterious, sad, haunting, touching, confusing or melancholy; it is a practical stage for clear-eyed action.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 238.

Life , People , Sadness , Business

“In fact the only times we could read funny books was when my father was in the Navy. Nothing would infuriate him more than to catch us browsing through Captain Marvel or Plastic Man. Men, after all, didn’t waste their time reading funny books. Men, he’d tell us, took life seriously. Nothing could be learned from books that were funny.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 75.

Life , Men , Books , Learning

“A lot of people tell me this, too: "Don't worry about it. It's God's will. Y'know, you weren't meant to be together. God's will." God's will? Really, God got involved in this? Really? Twenty years with somebody, twenty years of my life pretty much gone? All the money I made, the career I chose, pretty much torn to pieces? Two little kids' lives shattered? Really, God? Is that how you work? This brutal, disemboweling nightmare…is you? 'Cause if that's the case, then THERE IS NO GOD! (silence): And God said unto me: "Christopher…I did this so you could meet a 29-year-old, 5'11" Diesel jeans model who has two college degrees and already paid for her own boob job."”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

[a light shines on him and he drops to his knees, imitating a heavenly chorus] How shall I serve thee, Lord?
Love is Evol (2009)

Life , Money , God , People

“Well, people let me tell you, it sent a chill up and down my spine,
When I picked up the telephone and heard that he'd died out on the mainline.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Tonight's the Night
Song lyrics, Tonight's the Night (1975)

People

“Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Introduction
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Men , Exercises , History , Freedom

“The idol, Jwalamukhi, much worshipped by the infidels, was situated on the road to Nagarkot Some of the infidels have reported that Sultan Firoz went specially to see this idol and held a golden umbrella over it. But the author was informed by his respected father, who was in the Sultans retinue, that the infidels slandered the Sultan, who was a religious, God-fearing man, who, during the whole forty years of his reign, paid strict obedience to the law, and that such an action was impossible. The fact is, that when he went to see the idol, all the rais, ranas and zamindars who accompanied him were summoned into his presence, when he addressed them, saying, O fools and weak-minded, how can ye pray to and worship this stone, for our holy law tells us that those who oppose the decrees of our religion, will go to hell? The Sultan held the idol in the deepest detestation, but the infidels, in the blindness of their delusion, have made this false statement against him. Other infidels have said that Sultan Muhammad Shah bin Tughlik Shah held an umbrella over the same idol, but this is also a lie; and good Muhammadans should pay no heed to such statements. These two Sultans were sovereigns especially chosen by the Almighty from among the faithful, and in the whole course of their reigns, wherever they took an idol temple they broke and destroyed it; how, then, can such assertions be true? The infidels must certainly have lied!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) . Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 318 ff

God , Lie , Fear , Faith

“As told in the final section of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour Christmas CD:
Jeff Foxworthy: Tell 'em the one you did.
Engvall: Aw, why'd you have to bring that up?
Foxworthy: Come on, share that one with the group.
Engvall: Alright. Well, nobody's immune from this, not even me.
Foxworthy: Not even Brainiac here.
Engvall: I'm in the car park at the mall, and there's this guy with a coat hanger inside his window… and I could not stop myself. I said, "You lock your keys in your car?"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Driver: No, just washed it, gonna hang it up to dry (dumbass). Here's your sign.
Here's Your Sign, "Here's <i>MY</i> Sign..."

Cars , Guy , Christmas

“I want to give [my records] all away before some fool plays disco at my funeral, and then the record gets stuck, and nobody can tell, and the service goes on forever!”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

"Pouf Positive"
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Fools

“Let's not despise story-telling. Like all novelists, I have this low desire to tell people stories.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Oblique dreamer (2000)

People

“She's so many women,
He can't find the one who was his friend.
So he's hanging on to half her heart.
He can't have the restless part,
So he tells her to hasten down the wind.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Hasten Down the Wind"
Warren Zevon (1976)

Women , Heart , Parting

“What should I write?
What can I say?
How can I tell you how much I miss you?
The weather here has been as nice as it can be,
Although it doesn't really matter much to me.
For all the fun I'll have while you're so far away,
It might as well rain until September.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

It Might as Well Rain Until September (1962), co-written with Gerry Goffin, recorded by King and Bobby Vee
Song lyrics, Singles

Weather

“Of what she said to me that night—no matter.
The strange thing came next day.
My brain was full of music—something she played me—;
I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it
Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories,
Seeking for something, trying to tell me something,
Urging to restlessness: verging on grief.
I tried to play the tune, from memory,—
But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed
And found no resolution—only hung there,
And left me morbid... Where, then, had I heard it?...”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Music , Memory , Night

“Tell me, suit, don’t you wonder if it’s all worth it?’
“If what’s all worth what?” it says, and I can hear that condescending tone in its voice again.
“You know; living. Is it worth all the… bother?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I don’t ever wonder about it.”
“Why not?” I’m keeping my questions short as we walk, conserving energy and breath.
“I don’t need to wonder about that. It’s not important.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Not important?”
“It’s an irrelevant question. We live; that’s enough.”
“Descendant” (p. 44)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Question

“Who has sent this new serpent into our ruinous garden, already too fouled, too crowded to qualify as any locus of innocence — unless innocence be our age's neutral, our silent passing into the machineries of indifference — something that Kekulé's Serpent had come to — not to destroy, but to define to us the loss of… we had been given certain molecules, certain combinations and not others… we used what we found in Nature, unquestioning, shamefully perhaps — but the Serpent whispered, 'They can be changed, and new molecules assembled from the debris of the given…. ' Can anyone tell me what else he whispered to us? Come — who knows?”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Age , Nature , Change , Loss

“"It was not always so," he said slowly. "When I was a boy—stealing horses was not a crime. It was the way of a brave man, a warrior. Horses then served the purposes of the tribe." He could tell them more, but what he could tell them would perhaps disgust them, confuse them. He had told them enough. Tomacito could have told how Indian tribes rode horses, and when the horses grew old and useless, or when the tribe grew desperate for hunger or for shelter, they drank their horses' blood, stripped their hides for teepees, ate the flesh. Cruel, yes, but necessary. They bought horses, traded for horses, and if they had to—and often they had to—they stole horses. The Spaniards came, and then the white man, and they had horses, and the Indians had none, in the beginning. The white man and the Spaniard, on horses, chased the Indian from his own land. The Indians, on foot, were easy to chase, to hunt down, and kill. With horses, the Indians could stand and fight and die, or run and hide and live a little longer. It was an unfair fight from the start, even with horses, but without horses, it wasn't a fight at all. It was a massacre.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From Running Wild, p. 105
Other Topics

Hunger , Way , Boy , Horse

“He’d undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can’t call back the futures that your bad decisions lost. He didn’t need no philosopher to tell him that.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 9.

Decision , Future

“A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Thin Man

Nick Charles
The Thin Man (1929)

People , Truth

“This has been a marathon election as you can tell with a record turnout and I think it has been good for politics and it has been good for London.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

Thinking

“Eudoxes… not only based the method [of exhaustion] on rigorous demonstration… but he actually applied the method to find the volumes (1) of any pyramid, (2) of the cone, proving (1) that any pyramid is one third part of the prism which has the same base and equal height, and (2) that any cone is one third part of the cylinder which has the same base and equal height. Archimedes, however, tells us the remarkable fact that these two theorems were first discovered by Democritus, though he was not able to prove them (which no doubt means, not that he gave no sort of proof, but that he was not able to establish the propositions by the rigorous methods of Eudoxes. Archimedes adds that we must give no small share of the credit for these theorems to Democritus… another testimony to the marvellous powers, in mathematics as well as in other subjects, of the great man who, in the words of Aristotle, "seems to have thought of everything"…. Democritus wrote on irrationals; he is also said to have discussed the question of two parallel sections of a cone (which were evidently supposed to be indefinitely close together), asking whether we are to regard them as equal or unequal… Democritus was already close on the track of infinitesimals.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Achimedes (1920)

Mathematics , Question , Parting

“Let me tell you about the English War Bow, Joscelyn. It is a simple thing, med of yew, a peasant's tool, really. My huntsman can use one, but he is the only man in Berat who has ever mastered the weapon. Why do you think that is? I'll tell you anyway. It takes years, Joscelyn, many years to master the yew bow. Ten years? Probably that long, and after ten years a man can send an arrow clean through armor at two hundred paces. Splat! A thousand ecus of man, armor, and weaponry fallen to a peasant's bow. And it isn't luck, Joscelyn. My huntsman can put an arrow through a bracelet at a hundred paces. He can pierce mail coat at two hundred. I've seen him put an arrow through an oak door at a hundred and fifty, and the door was three inches thick!”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Count of Berat, p. 111
The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

War , Thinking

“He [Khufu] had discovered the fact that if you tell somebody to do something, nine times out of ten he will do it.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

Time

“And silence … is loud! And I'd be straining real hard to hear what those two boys were saying. And finally, just when they figured I had my ear right against the window, one of those ol' boys would turn to the other and say "Did you know that Jesus died for your sins?" And the other one would say "Why no, tell me about it!"”

Mike Warnke (1946) Evangelical Christian minister

Alive (album) (1975)

Boy , Silence

“He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.”

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895) British hymn-writer and poet

Hymn: All things bright and beautiful http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/l/allthing.htm

God

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Life , Men , Money , War

“Give them the old Trump bullshit," he told the architect Der Scutt before a presentation of the Trump Tower design at a press conference in 1980. "Tell them it is going to be a million square feet, sixty-eight stories.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

'After the Gold Rush', in Vanity Fair, by Marie Brenner, September 1, 1990
1980s

“I think the case is so strong that I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body.”

David Souter (1939) Judge of the United States of America

On Cameras in Supreme Court, Souter Says, 'Over My Dead Body' https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E6D71539F933A05750C0A960958260, The New York Times, March 30, 1996

Thinking , Strong , Dead

“Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Speech to voters of South Salford (1906), quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 204
Response to his Tory opponent's slogan, "Don't vote for a Frenchman and a Catholic". On polling day, 13 January 1906, Belloc, standing as a Liberal, overturned a Conservative majority to win by 852 votes, winning again four years later, though by an even slimmer margin.

God , Religion

“Well, whoever Keyser Söze is, I can tell you he is going to get gloriously drunk tonight.”

Kevin Spacey (1959) American actor, director and producer

Oscar acceptance speech for his performance in The Usual Suspects (February 1996)

“Man: [looking at a Stieglitz's photo of 'Equivalents'] Is this a photograph of water?
Stieglitz: What difference does it make of what it is a photograph?
Man: But is it a photograph of water?
Stieglitz: I tell you it does not matter.
Man: Well, then, is it a picture of the sky?
Stieglitz: It happens to be a picture of the sky. But I cannot understand why that is of any importance.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

w:Dorothy Norman recorded a conversation between Stieglitz and a man, looking at one of his 'Equivalents' prints
Source: 'Minor White, A Living Remembrance', Dorothy Norman, in 'Aperture', 1984, p. 9.

Photo , Understanding , Water

“I said, "Right. Now you and I are getting into an aircraft. We are going over to London. We are going to see "Murch" (Maj. General J. C. Murchie) and we are going to see Mr. Massey (Vincent Massey, Canadian High Commissioner) and tell them what this is all about."”

Christopher Vokes (1904–1985) Canadian general

The Occupation, p. 206
Vokes - My Story (1985)

“But you [Australians] have an overwhelmingly publicly-financed [health care] system…I come from a country that has the private monopoly system. I can tell you it is three times more expensive than the UK, and I just wanted to share with you that UK life expectancy is 81.6 years, in the US it’s 78.7 years. And we pay three times more than you do for the NHS”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

National Health Service
Climate, Welfare..., Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 October, 2018 http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4892252.htm

Life , Health , Time , Country

“Women tell men things that men are not very likely to find out for themselves.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Robertson Davies: Beyond the Visible World".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Women , Men

“We started shooting the film before they'd even come up with a working model of King Kong, it wasn't unusual for the wardrobe to be decided on the day before a scene was going to be shot - usually those things are worked out months in advance. We had a veteran crew, and our cameraman, Harold Wellman, had actually worked on the original 'King Kong' in 1933. It was my first movie, of course, and people would take me aside and tell me that no matter how many more movies I made, I'd never make another one like this”

Jessica Lange (1949) American actress

Jessica Lange: Woman Behind the Ape http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/jessica-lange-woman-behind-the-ape (December 17, 1976)

People

“You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all, but let all you tell be truth.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

James Burgh, in The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
Misattributed

Truth

“Well I hope he's got his fuel card with him he could buy some more. If I was him I would get out of the car and head straight to the airport I would not want to come back to the pits!(Alesi fails to acknowledge the pit-boards telling him to come in and runs out of fuel)”

Martin Brundle (1959) British racecar driver

Hope , Cars

“Balla, he advanced Dynamic Futurism.... drawing closer, not to the human body but to the machine, as contemporary muscles of a man of today... The actual structure of each of Balla's works tells us that the dynamic power sensed by the artist is incomparable greater than the actual bodies of the machines, and the content of each machine is only a small part of this dynamic power, since each machine is a mere unit from the sum total of the forces of contemporary life.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote, c. 1915 in: 'Cubofuturism', Malevich, in Essays on Art, op. cit., vol 2; as quoted in Futurism, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, pp. 59-60
1910 - 1920

Life , Sense , Future , Parting

“What preoccupies most scientists now is not how much they know compared to 50 years ago, though that is enormous as a difference, but how little they know compared to what they're finding out […] For a few milliseconds really of cosmic time our species has lived on one very very small rock, in a very small solar system that's a part of a fantastically unimportant suburb, in one of an uncountable number of galaxies […] Every single second since the big bang a star the size of our sun has blown up, gone to nothing […] And indeed physicists now exist who can tell you the date on which our sun will follow suit […] We know when it's [the world] coming to an end and we know how it will be, but we know something even more extraordinary which is the rate of expansion of this explosion we're looming through is actually speeding up. Our universe is flying apart further and faster than we thought it was […] Everyone who studies it professionally finds it impossible to reconcile this extraordinarily destructive, chaotic, self-destructive process, to find in it the finger of god, to find in that the idea of a design. And it's not just because we know so little about it, it's because what we know about it that's essential doesn't seem as if it's the intended result brought about by a divine-benign creator who loves every single one of us living as we do on this tiny rock in this negligible suburb of the cosmos.”

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

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=11m29s
2010s, 2010

Love , God , World , Star

“I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing — I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn’t really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project — it’s an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 42

Hate , Idea

“They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U. S. international–U. S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U. S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff.”

Russ Tice (1961) former intelligence analyst

As told to Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News, which is the website of Sibel Edmonds, a high-level FBI whistle-blower NSA Whistleblower: NSA Spying On – and Blackmailing – Top Government Officials and Military Officers, Fox News, 2013-06-20 http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/06/20/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying-%E2%80%93-and-blackmailing-%E2%80%93-top-government-officials-and-military,

People , World , Law , Intelligence

“I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false: let the mind find out what is good for the mind.”
Oculis de homine non credo, habeo melius et certius lumen quo a falsis uera diiudicem: animi bonum animus inueniat.

Seneca the Younger Moral Essays

De Vita Beata (On the Happy Life): cap. 2, line 2
Alternate translation: I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of the man. (translator unknown).
Moral Essays

Light , Falseness

““Stop,” Holden said. “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear any more of your stories about how being a cop makes you wiser and deeper and able to face the truth about humanity. As far as I can tell, all it did was break you. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Dresden and his Protogen buddies thought they could choose who lives and who dies. That sound familiar? And don’t tell me it’s different this time, because everyone says that, every time. And it’s not.””

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 43 (p. 437)

Truth , Time

“I tell you one thing I did used to like: the fish and chips. But I stopped eating fish this year. One day I just felt the death in it.”

RZA (1969) American rapper, record producer, actor, screenwriter, author, director

"One of these men is God" by Roy Wilkinson, in Select, July 1997, p. 60.

Death , Fish

“"Depa is right: Jedi are insane." "Ever since I came to this planet, people have been telling me how crazy I am. They've told me this so many times that I had started to wonder if it might be true. Now, though, I understand: you don't say this because it's true. Not even because you think it's true. You say it because you hope it's true. Because if I am insane, you aren't really the revolting slime-hearted vermin that, down deep, you know you are."”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Kar Vastor and Mace Windu, p. 286
Shatterpoint (2004)

People , Hope , Understanding , Thinking

“I like the War. It is only War that gives us a normal existence. What do you do in peace-time? You stay at home; you don't know what to do with your time; you argue with your parents, and your wife - if you have one. Everyone thinks you are an insufferable egotist - and so you are. The War comes; you only go home every five or six months. You are a hero, and, what women appreciate much more, you are a change. You know stories that have never been published. You've seen strange men and terrible things. Your father, instead of telling his friends that you are embittering the end of his life, introduces you to them as an oracle. These old men consult you on foreign politics. I you are married, your wife is prettier than ever; if you are not, all the girls lay siege to you.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Life , Women , Men , War

“I— finally, I have the body that I want, and that's a thing people really covet. It's a hard thing to achieve, and I did. And I'm going to tell you how to have exactly the body that you want. You just have to want a shitty body. That's all it is. You have to want your own shitty, ugly, disgusting body.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Season 1, Episode 3.
Louie

People

“T were vain to tell thee all I feel,
Or say for thee I'd die.
Ah, well-a-day, the sweetest melody
Could never, never say, one half my love for thee.”

J. Augustine Wade (1796–1845) Irish composer

T were vain to tell, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love , Feeling

“I think we went through — in America, at least, we went through a period in the ’60s and ’70s when the education establishment became extremely liberal, and part of that is a flirtation with relativism. And a resistance — it’s horrible to think of — of adults telling kids what’s right and wrong. What a terrible thing. That’s oppression. And so we created these sort of value-free spaces, which conveys a value, which is that there’s no right or wrong, everyone decides for themselves. Uh, everyone’s opinion is equal. You should say your opinion and then you get a lot of incivility. What I would like to see is a revamped civics curriculum where we teach very explicitly the long tradition of left-right. Um, we teach what each side is. You can’t say right about it, that’s my language. But, um, you teach what each side is concerned about. You know, very much like the line here. Uh, both are essential. One without the other creates an unbalanced American civic order.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

"The Psychology Behind Morality" (12 June 2014) http://www.onbeing.org/program/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-behind-morality/transcript/6347#main_content

Education , Thinking , Parting

“The Unicorn Sonata … tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if we'd only open our eyes — and our ears — to find it.”

Peter S. Beagle (1939) American writer

The Unicorn Sonata (1996)

Home

“Frankly, this is my position: I have been painting for two years, and my only models have been your [ Monet's ] own works; I have been following the wonderful path you broke for us. I have always worked regularly and conscientiously, but without advice or help, for I do not know any impressionist painter who would be able to guide me, living as I am in an environment more or less hostile to what I am doing. And so I fear I may lose my way, and I beg you to let me see you, if only for a short visit. I should be happy to show you five or six studies; perhaps you would tell me what you think of them and give me the advice I need so badly, for the fact is that I have the most horrible doubts, having always worked by myself, without teacher, encouragement, or criticism.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

In a letter to Claude Monet, 1880; quoted by Geffroy: Claude Monet, vol. I, p. 175; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p. 15
In 1880 an exhibition of the works of Claude Monet had - as Signac was to say later - 'decided his career,' - and after his first efforts as an impressionist Signac had ventured to appeal to Monet, writing him this sentence in his letter

Hostility , Fear , Way , Thinking

“I tell ya, my wife's a lousy cook. After dinner, I don't brush my teeth. I count them.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 18

Cooking

Quotes about tell page 29

Quotes about tell
page 29