Quotes about tell (7229 quotes, page 32)

“The man's become inhuman, I tell you," said Kemp. "I am as sure he will establish a reign of terror—so soon as he has got over the emotions of this escape—as I am sure I am talking to you. Our only chance is to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head.”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 25: The Hunting of the Invisible Man

Chance

“You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Falseness

“The semiliterate on the next bar stool will tell you with absolute, arrogant assurance just how to solve the world's problems; while the scholar who has spent a lifetime studying their causes is not at all sure how to do this.”

Edwin Thompson Jaynes (1922–1998) American physicist

Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (2003)

World , Problem , Study

“There science is dealing with physical facts, in art we are dealing with psychic effects. With this I come to my first statement: 'The source of art – that is, where it comes from – is the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect'. That's what I'm talking about. When I want to speak about why I am doing the same thing now, which is squares, for – how long? – 19 years. Because there is no final solution in any visual formulation. Although this may be just a belief on my part, I have some assurances that that is not the most stupid thing to do, through Cezanne whom I consider as one of the greatest painters. From Cézanne we have, so the historians tell us – 250 paintings of Mont St. Victoire. But we know that Cézanne has left in the fields often more than he took home because he was disappointed with his work. So we may conclude he did many more than 250 of the same problem.”

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

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Stupidity , Art , Disappointment , Home

“I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

"A Conversation With Roger Zelazny" (8 April 1978), talking with Terry Dowling and Keith Curtis in Science Fiction Vol. 1, #2 (June 1978)

Thinking , Science

“Now, leaving aside all the physical factors one can quote — leaving aside the rape or murder, leaving aside the bloody catalogue of oppression which we are too familiar with any way — what the system does to the subjugated is to destroy his sense of reality. It destroys his father's authority over him. His father can no longer tell him anything because his past has disappeared.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The American Dream and the American Negro" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-dream.html in The New York Times (7 March 1965)

Way , Quotes , Reality , Sense

“Here we are, sixty something human minds. We’ve been migrated—while still awake—right out of our own heads using an amazing combination of nanotechnology and electron spin resonance mapping, and we’re now running as software in an operating system designed to virtualize multiple physics models and provide a simulation of reality that doesn’t let us go mad from sensory deprivation! And this whole package is about the size of a fingertip, crammed into a starship the size of your grandmother’s old Walkman, in orbit around a brown dwarf just over three light-years from home, on its way to plug into a network router created by incredibly ancient alien intelligences, and you can tell me that the idea of a fundamental change in the human condition is nonsense?”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 5 (“Router”), p. 184

Way , Home , Intelligence , Idea

“A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Source: D. R. Schneider Saving the Whales http://books.google.co.in/books?id=yimJZOXm9bEC&pg=PA77, Bwana Doc Adventures, 1 September 2008, p. 77

“We didn’t care if people stared;
We’d make out in a crowd somewhere.
Somebody’d tell us to get a room;
It’s hard to believe that was me and you.
Now we keep saying that we’re OK.
But I don’t want to settle for good not great.
I miss the way that it felt back then; I wanna feel that way again.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Remind Me, sung with Carrie Underwood, written by Brad Paisley, Chris DuBois, and Kelley Lovelace.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)

People , Way , Feeling

“There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Pleasure , Communication

“I'm not laughing at you. […] I'm laughing at the whole stupid business. We face the biggest threat in our history and they give me a helmet too big, and you a helmet too small, and tell us we can't exchange them. It's too much. Really.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 9

Stupidity , History , Business

“You imply our education is of no use to you in after life. But no education is. We are not an employment agency; all we can do is to give you a grounding in the art of mixing with your fellow men, to tell you what to expect from life and give you an outward manner and inward poise, an old prescription from the eighteenth century which we call a classical education, an education which confers the infrequent virtues of good sense and good taste and the benefit of dual nationality, English and Mediterranean, and which, taking into account the difficulties of modern life, we find the philosophy best able to overcome them.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 3: A Georgian Boyhood, Ch. 24: Vale (p. 258)

Life , Men , Education , Art

“.. A market, a quay, a river. a gang of soldiers.... is just as good and more history than 'The cousins of Spinoza are visiting him accompanied by their mamma'. O! if I could say some time as Munkaczy: 'I painted almost everything I dreamed when I was 12 years old'. He can tell this, the man which I love as the greatest painter, whatever they may say here [in The Hague]. I hope that you once may see a true painting of me, not one of the many I shall have to make and which are [only] something, but a truly grandiose thing. All wasted fire.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) ..Een markt een kaai een rivier. een bende soldaten.. ..is net zoo goed en meer geschiedenis dan 'De nichtjes van Spinoza komen hem bezoeken vergezeld door hunne mamma'. O! dat ik nog eens kon zeggen als Munkaczy: ik heb bijna alles geschilderd wat ik droomde toen ik 12 jaar was. dat kan hij zeggen hem die ik voor de grootste schilder hou wat ze hier ook mogen zeggen. Ik hoop dat U nog eens een waar schilderij van me moogt zien, niet een van de velen die ik zal moeten maken en ook wel iets is, maar iets waarachtigsch grootsch. Allemaal verspild vuur.
quote of Breitner in a letter to his Maecenas A.P. van Stolk, 28 March 1882; original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/597
before 1890

Love , Dreams , Hope , History

“Don't tell God they were only little globs of tissue. They were real live persons, being formed in their mother; s womb.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Who Murdered Clarice? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1009/1009_01.asp" (2000)

God , Personality

““You and I don’t actually need to be here for this,” I said to the goat. The goat didn’t respond, but I could tell she agreed with me.”

John Scalzi The Last Colony

Source: The Last Colony (2007), Chapter 1 (p. 8)

“Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)

Books , Fear , Hell , Reading

“Tell me if the lovers are losers… tell me if any get more than the lovers.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

"Cool Tombs" (1918)

Lovers

“The slavery debate has been really a death-struggle from that moment. Mr. Clay thought not. Mr. Clay was a shrewd politician, but the difference between him and Calhoun was the difference between principle and expediency. Calhoun's sharp, incisive genius has engraved his name, narrow but deep, upon our annals. The fluent and facile talents of Clay in a bold, large hand wrote his name in honey upon many pages. But time is already licking it away. Henry Clay was our great compromiser. That was known, and that was the reason why Mr. Buchanan's story of a bargain with J. Q. Adams always clung to Mr. Clay. He had compromised political policies so long that he had forgotten there is such a thing as political principle, which is simply a name for the moral instincts applied to government. He did not see that when Mr. Calhoun said he should return to the Constitution he took the question with him, and shifted the battle-ground from the low, poisonous marsh of compromise, where the soldiers never know whether they are standing on land or water, to the clear, hard height of principle. Mr. Clay had his omnibus at the door to roll us out of the mire. The Whig party was all right and ready to jump in. The Democratic party was all right. The great slavery question was going to be settled forever. The bushel-basket of national peace and plenty and prosperity was to be heaped up and run over. Mr. Pierce came all the way from the granite hills of New Hampshire, where people are supposed to tell the truth, to an- nounce to a happy country that it was at peace — that its bushel-basket was never so overflowingly full before. And then what? Then the bottom fell out. Then the gentlemen in the national rope -walk at Washington found they had been busily twining a rope of sand to hold the country together. They had been trying to compromise the principles of human justice, not the percentage of a tariff; the instincts of human nature and consequently of all permanent government, and the conscience of the country saw it. Compromises are the sheet-anchor of the Union — are they? As the English said of the battle of Bunker Hill, that two such victories would ruin their army, so two such sheet- anchors as the Compromise of 1850 would drag the Union down out of sight forever.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

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

Death , People , Truth , Peace

“They must not know much about Alabama. But Alabama does not like Washington swamp critters telling us who can or cannot run for public office and who we can and cannot vote for.”

Mo Brooks (1954) American politician

Washington 'swamp critters' backing Luther Strange, Mo Brooks says http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2017/05/washington_swamp_critters_back.html (May 12, 2017)

“I tell you, in the first instance, that Ireland is an enslaved country. A great mistake is entertained by many persons to the effect that there cannot be slavery—that no man can be a slave unless he be in chains, or subject to the lash of the planter like the negroes; but the slavery of which I speak is the slavery of the people, which consists in this, that they do not make their own laws themselves—that they do not make the laws by which they are governed, but that those laws are made by others, and I say it boldly, that a people so circumstanced are in a state of slavery.”

Robert Holmes (1765–1859) Irish writer

Speech (1848-05-20) in the case of John Mitchel, Young Irelander and one of the Irish Confederation Leaders. Mitchel was later sentenced to fourteen years transportation.

People , Law , Personality , Country

“I have a message to the neo-Nazis, to the white nationalists, and to the neo-Confederates: Your heroes are losers. You are supporting a lost cause. And believe me, I knew the original Nazis, because you see, I was born in Austria in 1947, shortly after the Second World War. And growing up, I was surrounded by broken men, men who came home from a war filled with shrapnel and guilt, men who were misled into a losing ideology. And I can tell you: that these ghosts you idolize spent the rest of their lives living in shame and right now, they’re resting in hell.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

A message for Donald Trump -, ATTN video https://twitter.com/attn/status/898328098529083394 (August 2017)
2010s

Men , War , World , Home

“Your teachers are always telling you [high school students] to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults…. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005

School , Imagination , Teachers , Time

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

Way , Feeling , Thinking , Universe

“"Soviet Union is under dictatorship of the proletariat, the intelligentsia class is going to be starved to death."…a well known reporter had so warned me. Yes, I am afraid I might lost some sleep. But then, dictatorship of the proletariat(at present), isn't it for the forth coming of the classless society? As long as you do not murder it, naturally it's success will arrive soon, the elimination of classes will arrive soon, then no one will be "starved to death"…But now, the imperialists and their running dogs, still trying to tell us the Soviet Union's shortcomings, as if they really wish that Soviet Union would become heaven overnight, and all of it's people would enjoy life. Now, it turns out to be like that, it (imperialist) is disappointed, and feel uneasy…This is really the tears of the devil.”

Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese novelist and essayist

Source: 1932年《我們不再受騙了》

Life , Death , People , Dogs

“I must tell the House that the Falkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory. No aggression and no invasion can alter that simple fact. It is the Government's objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and are returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment…We cannot allow the democratic rights of the islanders to be denied by the territorial ambitions of Argentina.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104910
First term as Prime Minister

Housing , Dependency

“Do you remember that terrible moment, señors, when the self-righteousness of your youth died? When all the stern warnings of your elders, ignored until the consequences abruptly came crashing down on your head, made you see in a flash that the warnings hadn’t been unfair or mean-spirited or blind, they’d been right? All along your elders had been trying to tell you about the black joke that is life, trying to help you and save you from pain. But you insisted on running straight into the trap, mocking them as you ran, to the agony that was irreversible and permanent, with no one to blame, finally, but yourself.
It’s not good to see yourself in the mirror then.”

Kage Baker book Mendoza in Hollywood

Part 2 “Babylon is Fallen” Chapter 12 (pp. 259-260)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

Life , Pain , Youth , Help

“Y'know, when I said SEIU and ACORN, these were the brownshirts, people said that's crazy and I hope to God it is. But you tell me what they are if they're not thugs, enforcing the will of the masters in Washington. Be very careful, because the things that I have told you on this program were coming are here. We are in the most dangerous point in our republic, I believe, since the Civil War. We may be in the most dangerous place ever, because our people are different, our people are not as connected to God as we once were.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2000s, 2009

God , War , People , Hope

“A man who works under orders with other men must be without vanity. If he has too strong a will of his own and if his ideas are in conflict with those of his chief, the execution of orders will always be uncertain because of his efforts to interpret them in his own way. Faith in the chief must keep the gang together. Obviously deference must not turn into servility. A chief of staff or a departmental head should be able, if it seems to him (rightly or wrongly) that his superior is making a serious mistake, to tell him so courageously. But this sort of collaboration is really effective only if such frankness has true admiration and devotion behind it. If the lieutenant does not admit that his chief is more experienced and has better judgment than he himself, he will serve him badly. Criticism of the chief by a subordinate must be accidental and not habitual. What must an assistant do if he is sure he is right and if his chief refuses to accept his criticisms? He must obey the order after offering his objections. No collective work is possible without discipline. If the matter is so serious that it can have a permanent effect upon the future of a country, an army, or a commercial enterprise, the critic may hand in his resignation. But this must be done only as a last resort; as long as a man thinks he can be useful he must remain at his post.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Men , Faith , Way , Idea

“Like me, for instance, who can count so many years in my life when I completely lost all inclination to laugh, leaving aside whether or not this was my own fault, I for one need above all just to have a good laugh. I found that in Guy de Maupassant and there are others here, Rabelais among the old writers, Henri Rochefort among today's, where one can find that — Voltaire in 'Candide'. On the contrary, if one wants truth, life as it is, De Goncourt, for example, in 'Germinie Lacerteux', 'La fille Elisa', Zola in 'La joie de vivre' and 'L'assommoir' and so many other masterpieces paint life as we feel it ourselves and thus satisfy that need which we have, that people tell us the truth. The work of the French naturalists Zola, Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, De Goncourt, Richepin, Daudet, Huysmans is magnificent and one can scarcely be said to belong to one's time if one isn't familiar with them.”

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

Quote of Vincent, in his letter to sister Willemien van Gogh, from Paris, late October 1887; from letter 574 - original text on vangoghletters online http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let574/letter.html
1880s, 1887

Life , People , Truth , Guy

“Since there is no telling in advance where it may lead, reflection can be seen as dangerous.”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Introduction, p. 11
Think (1999)

“I keep hoping you’ll tell me. You’re the god, after all. If I prayed to you for guidance, and you decided to answer, what would you tell me?”
“I wouldn’t answer.”
“Because you don’t care? Or because you wouldn’t know what to say?”

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

More silence.
Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 17 “A Golden Chain” (engraving on metal plate) (p. 311)

God , Hope , Silence

“Delsarte tells me that Mozart stole outrageously from Galuppi, in the same way, I suppose, that Molière stole from anybody anywhere, if he found something work taking. I said that what was Mozart had not been stolen from Galuppi, or from anyone else for that matter.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

15 March 1855 (p. 270)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Way

“History and experience tells us that moral progress cannot come in comfortable and in complacent times, but out of trial and out of confusion.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Quoted variant: History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.
1970s, State of the Union Address (1975)

History , Time

“The attitude of the Church was not as dogmatic as is often assumed. Interpretations of Bible passages had been revised in the light of scientific research before. Everyone regarded the earth as spherical and as freely floating in space though the Bible tells a different story.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

pg 45.
Science in a Free Society (1978)

Light

“who'll save the poor little girl?
oh, Henry…
who'll tell the story of her?
Henry Darger”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Motherland (2001), Henry Darger

Girl

“Along the way she’d acquired a powerful conviction that history was a series of accidents—God was either absent or playing a very elaborate practical joke (the Eschaton didn’t count, having explicitly denied that it was a deity)—and that the seeds of evil usually germinated in the footprints of people who knew how everybody else ought to behave and felt the need to tell them so.”

Charles Stross book Iron Sunrise

Source: Iron Sunrise (2004), Chapter 18, “Grateful Dead” (p. 294)

God , People , Way , History

“Hello my Country
I once came to tell everyone your story
Your passion was my poetry
And your past my most potent glory
Your promise was my prayer
Your hypocrisy my nightmare
And your problems fill my present
Are we both going somewhere?”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

There Only Was One Choice
Song lyrics, Dance Band on the Titanic (1977)

Problem , Passion , Past , Country

“Did you know there are people that scoff at the Bible? I deal with them on a regular basis. I attract 'em like a lightning rod. The scoffers out there - they hate me! I'm trying to be nice to 'em, Okay, but they just don't like me. They don't appreciate what a nice, wonderful guy I am. The scoffers, the Bible says, are going to be walking after their own lust. You know the reason people scoff at the Bible? It's not because of their science. They think it is; Okay, but no. They scoff at the Bible because of their lust. They don't want God telling them what to do. That's the bottom line, every single time.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

God , Hate , People , Guy

“Will you grant the audience?"
"Of cour-" Jarlaxle started to answer, but Entreri grasped his shoulder and shifted in front.
"Tell King Gareth we do not enjoy the spectacle of an army at our doorstep unannounced. But even so, Gareth may enter my home. We have many tall towers here, as you can see. Please tell Gareth, from me, that he is most welcomed to dive headlong off of any of them.”

R. A. Salvatore book Road of the Patriarch

Road of the Patriarch

Home

“When the ghost comes round at midnight
Well you both can have some fun
He can drive you mad, he can make you sad
He can keep you from the sun
When they take him down, he'll be both safe and sound
And the hand does fit the glove
And no matter what they tell you,
There's good and evil in everyone.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Who Was That Masked Man
Song lyrics, Veedon Fleece (1974)

Sadness , Evil , Sun , Madness

“The Vampire Lestat here. I have a story to tell you. It's about something that happened to me.”

Anne Rice The Tale of the Body Thief

Lestat
The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)

“For a long time I've been telling Stalin that Beria is a crook but Stalin won't listen.”

Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze (1886–1937) Soviet politician

Quoted in "Armed truce: the beginnings of the Cold War 1945-46"‎ - Page 65 - by Hugh Thomas - History - 1986

Time

“Some of my friends good-humoredly – and some a little bit severely – have called me a 'mystic.' Well I'd like to say this about any w:mysticism I may suppose to have. If an arch-angel from heaven were to come, and were to start giving me, telling me, teaching me, and giving me instruction, I'd ask him for the text. I'd say, 'Where's it say that in the Bible? I want to know.' And I would insist that it was according to the scriptures, because I do not believe in any extra-scriptural teachings, nor any anti-scriptural teachings, or any sub-scriptural teachings. I think we ought to put the emphasis where God puts it, and continue to put it there, and to expound the scriptures, and stay by the scriptures. I wouldn't – no matter if I saw a light above the light of the sun, I'd keep my mouth shut about it 'til I'd checked with Daniel and Revelation and the rest of the scriptures to see if it had any basis in truth. And if it didn't, I'd think I'd just eaten something I shouldn't, and I wouldn't say anything about it. Because I don't believe in anything that is unscriptural or that is anti-scripture.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

What Difference Does the Holy Spirit Make?

God , Truth , Angels , Thinking

“My mind has been so much occupied these days by the thought of Cézanne, of how he has been one of the three or four powerful artists who have affected me like a thunderstorm, like some great event. Do you still remember what we saw at Vollard [art-seller in Paris who showed Cézanne's works frequently in his gallery] in 1900? And then, during the final days of my last stay in Paris, those truly astonishing early paintings of his at the Galerie Pellerin. Tell your husband he should see the things there... If it were not absolutely necessary [Paula was pregnant] for me to be here right now [Germany], nothing could keep me away from Paris.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter from Worpswede, 21 October, 1907, to her friend Clara Rilke-Westhoff; as quoted in Voicing our visions, - Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 208
October 1907 Rilke started to write his famous series 'Letters on Cézanne' to his wife Clara Rilke-Westhoff
1906 + 1907

Art , Painting

“What had happened? As he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. That no one had thought fit to tell him! No one! It was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He had been forgotten. Yet he had always wished to be forgotten. He could not have it both ways.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 69 “Mr Rottcodd Again” (p. 393)

Way , Question

“I was asked by one of the reports whether or not I would call Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist. I didn't mention her name. See, one of the articles said I had mentioned her. This is not true. I didn't mentioned her. But leave that aside. All I said was, she had come forward as a lesbian, she identifies herself as someone who engages in homosexual sexuality. I have just said that by definition, it involves selfish hedonism. I can't change that. Now, it might be true [that] the argument I've just given is the best argument in support of the Republican plank on gay marriage that I think can be made. There are lots of other arguments that can be added, but, in principle, that's the best one because we need to understand that marriage is procreational sex, not recreational sex. Now, I want to tell you. If my daughter or anybody else engages in behavior that put them under that descriptive label, I will not consent to lie about it, and I will not tell the American people that I support a plank that requires this logic and then exempt my daughter from the logic that it requires.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Party for the President, September 2, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_09_02partypresident.htm.
2009

Marriage , People , Lie , Sex

“There are limits to how much I can tell you because the investigations into this network by both the New South Wales police and the ADF investigative service are ongoing. But evidence collected to date has identified a group of men, within our ranks, who have allegedly produced highly inappropriate material, demeaning women and distributed it on the internet and defence's email networks. If this is true, then the actions of these members are in direct contravention to every value that the Australian Army stands for.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Message regarding unacceptable behaviour (2013)

Women , Men

“The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since he has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years of age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology.”

Henry M. Morris (1918–2006) American young earth creationist and Christian apologist

The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (Bethany House Pub), 1972, p. 94

God , Age , Way , Question

“speak to me
don't mislead me, the calm I feel means a storm is swelling
there's no telling where it starts or how it ends”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Blind Man's Zoo (1989), Trouble Me

Feeling

“Well, no question decisions have made things unstable. But the question is can we succeed. And I believe we can. Listen, I'd like to see stability and a unified Iraq. A young democracy will provide the stability we look for. I will tell you that if we just isolate ourselves from the Middle East and hope for the best, we will not address the conditions that had led young suiciders to get on airplanes to come and attack us in the first place.”

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

60 Minutes interview http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/14/60minutes/main2359119.shtml in response to the question “But wasn't it your administration that created the instability in Iraq?” (January 14, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Hope , Democracy , Question , Decision

“To tell the history of debt, then, is also necessarily to reconstruct how the language of the marketplace has come to pervade every aspect of human life—even to provide the terminology for the moral and religious voices ostensibly raised against it.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Five, "A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Moral Relations", p. 89

Life , History

“You wretch! [Cezanne is portraying the art dealer Vollard who changed his pose during the painter session] You've spoiled the pose. Do I have to tell you again you must sit like an apple? Does an apple move?”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from a conversation in Cézanne's studio in Paris, ca. 1896-98; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1880s - 1890s

Art , Change

“I mean, the computer industry promises nothing. Did you ever read a shrink-wrapped license agreement? You should read one. It basically says, if this product deliberately kills your children, and we knew it would, and we decided not to tell you because it might harm sales, we're not liable. I mean, it says stuff like that. They're absurd documents. You have no rights.”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

[Hartford Advocate, 2006-04-27, Your computer is not secure]
Politics and societal issues of the digital age

Children , Reading

“I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this alone I know full well,
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.”

Thomas Brown (1662–1704) English translator and writer of satire

Laconics, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). A slightly different version is found in Brown's Works collected and published after his death. Compare: "Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare; Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te" (translation: "I do not love thee, Sabidius, nor can I say why; this only I can say, I do not love thee"), Martial, Epigram i. 33; "Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas; Je n'en saurois dire la cause, Je sais seulement une chose; C'est que je ne vous aime pas", Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, Comte de Rabutin (1618–1693).
Source: See,Talk discussion

Love

“God told him to bring two of every sort, not two of every species, no, two of every sort. He said, bring them after his kind, after their kind, after his kind. The Bible is real clear on that topic. You bring all the kinds, not every species. You only have to bring those the whose nostrils have the breath of life, of those on dry land. Noah did not have to bring any fish on the ark. They had plenty of water outside. He also did not have to bring any bugs on the Ark, because bugs do not have nostrils. Bugs breathe through their skin, through spiracles. Insects were not required to be on the Ark. Insects can survive a flood just fine. Go any place where there has been a flood, after the water goes down. Walk out into the mud and tell me the first thing that you notice. Bugs by the millions and millions, right? Insects did not have to go on the ark. Some of them might have been on there but they did not have to be.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

Life , God , Fish , Water

“All three elements of storytelling carry one vital philosophy– to offer universal insight, and many instances, hope and therapy to those who absolutely need it. To illuminate a combined and universal purpose, whether it be through the written word, the spoken word, or both elements incorporated into another element of truth. All exist to tell a story to the world.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On being a writer, actress, and producer http://reelladies.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/reel-lady-masiela-lusha/

Truth , World , Hope , Universe

“I keep the wolf from the door
But he calls me up
Calls me on the phone
Tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up
Steal all my children
If I don't pay the ransom
And I'll never see 'em again
If I squeal to the cops”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

"A Wolf at the Door"
Lyrics, Hail to the Thief (2003)

Children , Way , Wolf

“[A]nd between this top-quality programming are the most miserable adverts in the world – former Mancunian top cop John Stalker trying to sell you sun awnings; trying to get you to blot out every ray of light from the world for those in the grip of manic depression – 'Hello, I'm John Stalker. Are you, like me, tired of the pitiless glare of an English summer; maddened by the relentless gaze of cruel Helios; sick of lurking in your house all summer long, like a mad bloke in a siege situation - such as I would have dealt with in my high-flying career? Well, suffer no longer. Install Gloom Master sun awnings - summer bang to rights!' Terrible! Then it all gets worse with those terrible loan adverts. These awful, tragic, hollow-eyed wraiths come on, telling you these awful stories - 'I'm up to my eyes in debt, and, curiously, no reputable company would give me another loan! Then I discovered Dodgy Bastards. They've given me a million pounds, and all they want in return are my kidneys.' No, don't do it! And then - worse than that - the accident insurance adverts - 'Where there's blame, there's a claim”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

when people who've had these accidents come on like medieval beggars, and wave their stumps at you for money with these outlandish stories - 'I slipped on a banana skin and successfully sued the Dominican Republic...' (Wrap up Warm tour, May 2004)
Stand-up

Money , People , World , Light

“I have been kicked out of this place about seven times, but I did not have any chance to explain. No one said to me, "Dennis, will you explain why you said that the Right Hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) was lining his pockets when he picked up that non-executive directorship of British Telecom?" I would have loved to tell everyone all about that, but Mr. Speaker said, "On your bike - early bath," and off I had to go.”

Dennis Skinner (1932) British politician

Speech http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199192/cmhansrd/1992-02-28/Debate-1.html in the House of Commons (28 February 1992)
1990s

Love , Chance , Time

““Yes, maybe it’s just one colossal big joke with no point to it.” Lazarus stood up and stretched and scratched his ribs. “But I can tell you this, Andy, whatever the answers are, here’s one monkey that’s going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.””

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“Methuselah’s Children” Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 667; closing words
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Tree

“Tell me that Billy Joe Armstrong doesn’t look like a fruit.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (August 29, 2005)

“One of the most interesting things about business to me is that I find so many business men who are willing to try experiments. I should like to tell you about two evenings I spent last winter and the contrast between them. I went one evening to a drawing-room meeting where economists and M. Ps. talked of current affairs, of our present difficulties. It all seemed a little vague to me, did not seem really to come to grips with our problem. The next evening it happened that I went to a dinner of twenty business men who were discussing the question of centralization and decentralization. Each one had something to add from his own experience of the relation of branch firms to the central office, and the other problems included in the subject. There I found L hope for the future. There men were not theorizing or dogmatizing; they were thinking of what they had actually done and they were willing to try new ways the next morning, so to speak. Business, because it gives us the opportunity of trying new roads, of blazing new trails, because, in short, it is pioneer work, pioneer work in the organized relations of human beings, seems to me to offer as thrilling an experience as going into a new country and building railroads over new mountains. For whatever problems we solve in business management may help towards the solution of world problems, since the principles of organization and administration which are discovered as best for business can be applied to government or international relations. Indeed, the solution of world problems must eventually be built up from all the little bits of experience wherever people are consciously trying to solve problems of relation. And this attempt is being made more consciously and deliberately in industry than anywhere else.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxi-xxii

Men , People , World , Hope

“Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: Ringworld (1970), p. 314

Universe

“A thought that has found a plastic expression must continue to expand in keeping with its own plastic idiom. A plastic idea must be expressed with plastic means just as a musical idea is expressed with musical means, or a literary idea with verbal means. Neither music nor literature are wholly translatable into other art forms; and so a plastic art cannot be created through a superimposed literary meaning. The artist who attempts to do so produces nothing more than a show-booth. He contents himself with visual story-telling. He subjects himself to a mechanistic kind of thinking which disintegrates into fragments.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40-46
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Art , Music , Literature , Idea

“Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

People , Personality

“So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn't have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead.”

Max Tegmark (1967) Swedish-American cosmologist

Interview http://www.templeton.org/features/grant/fqx/hp-sub01.html with the Co-Founders of the Foundational Questions Institute, Dr.Max Tegmark and Dr. Anthony Aguirre.

History , Understanding , Question , Thinking

“It’s six months since I did the interview with Jeremy Paxman that inspired this book, and British media today is awash with halfhearted condemnations of my observation that voting is pointless and my admission that I have never voted. My assertion that other people oughtn’t vote either was born of the same instinctive rejection of the mantle of appointed social prefect that prevents me from telling teenagers to “Just Say No” to drugs. I cannot confine my patronage to the circuitry of their minuscule wisdom. “People died so you’d have the right to vote.” No, they did not; they died for freedom. In the case where freedom was explicitly attached to the symbol of democratic rights, like female suffrage, I don’t imagine they’d’ve been so willing if they’d known how tokenistic voting was to become. Note too these martyrs did not achieve their ends by participating in a hollow, predefined ritual, the infertile dry hump of gestural democracy; they did it by direct action. Emily Davison, the hero of women’s suffrage, hurled herself in front of the king’s horses; she defied the tyranny that oppressed her and broke the boundaries that contained her. I imagine too that this woman would have had the rebellious perspicacity to understand that the system she was opposing would adjust to incorporate the female vote and deftly render it irrelevant. This woman, who left her job as a teacher to dedicate her life to activism, was imprisoned nine times. She used methods as severe and diverse as arson and hunger-striking to protest and at the time of her death would have been regarded as a terrorist.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Life , Death , Wisdom , Women

“Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?There will be many who find "To the Wonder" elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/to-the-wonder-2013 of To the Wonder (April 6, 2013)
NOTE: This was the last movie review Roger Ebert filed.
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Dreams , Hope , Soul , Motivation

“Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Source: Turning to one another (2002), p. 92

Life

“Why doesn't he throw himself on the ground, saying "You are my Soul, my Better Self, be mine or I stab myself with this pair of protractors"; then she could reply, "Nay, press me not, I am Another's". In that way they could really have some romantic fun and store up things to tell their grandchildren. No style, no breadth, that's the trouble with the modern High School set.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

School , Way , Soul

“All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Truth

“Then there's a feller who got hit by a train! How the - how the heck do y'get hit by a train! I mean it's not like it'll jump up and attack ya at the last minute or nothin'! There's, like, a railroad there to give ya, y'know, a heads up sign! I tell ya, if you ever gonna get hit by a train, do this: [steps to side] TA-DA! There ya go! Attaboy!”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Git-R-Done (album)

Training

“I'd like to start off by telling you some great news. I got approved for a new reality show—it's an extreme makeover show for middle-aged lesbians, called "This Old Bull-Dyke". We already have a sponsor, too- Wolverine steel-toed boots has picked it up. We had another title, but the censors nixed it; it was originally going to be called, "Pimp My Muff!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

Behavioral Problems

Age , Reality

“And what this could mean, as illustrated by what happened in 1854, the first real test of the Fugitive Slave Act? There was a slave named Anthony Burns in Virginia who stowed away on board a coastal vessel that then sailed to Boston. And Anthony Burns, who was apparently quite literate but not very smart, wrote a letter to his brother back in Virginia telling him where he was. Well, before Anthony Burns was returned to the State of Virginia, the President, Franklin Pierce, had sent an artillery regiment of marines to Boston. He had federalized the National Guard of Boston. He had 3,000 soldiers surrounding them, making sure that nobody could break the jail and let Anthony Burns out. This was an example of the way in which the federal police power would be used to make sure that slaves were returned to their masters or that slaves couldn’t escape from their masters. So this is the real issue.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

Way

“If our country got along with Russia, that would be a great thing. When Putin goes out and tells everybody -- and you talk about a relationship, but he says Donald Trump is going to win and Donald Trump is a genius, and then I have people saying you should disavow. I said, I'm going to disavow that? … If we can have a good relationship with Russia and if Russia would help us get rid of ISIS, frankly, as far as I'm concerned, you're talking about tremendous amounts of money and lives and everything else, that would be a positive thing, not a negative thing.”

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

2010s, 2016, July, This Week Interview (July 30, 2016)

Money , People , Help , Country

“You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish — ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

A Joy for Ever, lecture II, section 74 (1857).

Time

“Your captain is your mother and father. He will tell you when to eat and when to sleep. Listen to him. Make happy. And we will all see the land we are going to.”

Mau Piailug (1932–2010) Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal and a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wa…

An Ocean in Mind (1987)

Sleep , Happiness

“A good yarn, an offbeat tale, a bloodcurdling ghost story -- they need no explanation or excuse for the telling!”

C. B. Colby (1904–1977) American writer

Source: World's Best "True" Ghost Stories, (1988), p. 5

“Experts never seem to tell us what we’re up against until we’re up against it.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Featherisms (2008)

“If you can tell anyone about it, it's not the worst thing you ever did.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“They [the psychics] find someone that's at a vulnerable point in their life. They create a sense of dependency. They create a pseudo-world. They will tell people, "I'm doing God's work. I'm taking the money to the altar". The amount of money that these people are defrauded of by these so-called psychics is astronomical. We're talking in the billions of dollars.”

Bob Nygaard private detective specializing in psychic fraud

This Ex-Cop Has Locked Up 28 ‘Psychic’ Scammers, Returned $3.2M to Victims https://web.archive.org/web/20180126035505/http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nosacredcows/2017/08/ex-cop-psychic-scammers/, patheos.com (21 August 2017)

Life , Money , God , People

“The Holocaust would have been unimaginable without the Nazi Party; the Nazi Party would have been unimaginable without Hitler; and Hitler’s rise to power would have been unimaginable without the unique circumstances that brought the Weimar Republic to ruin. To hear Goldhagen tell it, mass murder was all set to go: a century-long build-up of eliminationist anti-Semitism simply had to express itself. But the moment when a historian says that something had to happen is the moment when he stops writing history and starts predicting the past.”

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

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

History , Past

“Advised a young diplomat "to tell the truth, and so puzzle and confound his enemies."”

Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador

Attributed. E.g., Vol 24, Encyclopedia Britannica of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, page 721 https://books.google.com/books?id=_GlJAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA721&lpg=PA721&dq=truth+wotton+confound+advice&source=bl&ots=-cGk3UDLLj&sig=ltOR1xtI9WFic1JWKiFmIZ8Yce0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVkZCsj-jRAhXCyFQKHTmsCkAQ6AEIODAG#v=onepage&q=truth%20wotton%20confound%20advice&f=false (9th Ed. 1894).
Compare Mark Twain who, in Following the Equator, said "When in doubt, tell the truth" (which is often mis-quoted as containing an additional clause providing "it will confound your enemies and astound your friends").

Truth

“ […] we can strip off all grammatical clues to sentence structure, all affixes and prepositions, and yet still achieve communication. Thus restricted to nouns, simple "stories" can be told in word chains: Woman, street, crowd, traffic, noise, haste, thief, bag, loss, scream, police…. Again, the reader's past experience of his language is sufficient to restore the missing elements, sufficiently accurately for the purpose. But of course, not only does the reader have experience of sentence structure, enabling him to supply the missing syntactical elements, but also he has experience of typical contexts in which the various words are used; many words bear an aura about with them. It might be more difficult to tell a tale about a policeman who robbed a woman, for instance, with so little redundancy! ”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), Words and Meaning: Semantics, p.122

Communication , Loss , Past

“I have more respect for this man than any of my previous managers, and I played for Fred Haney, Danny Murtaugh and Bobby Bragan. This fellow makes me feel that he really appreciates what I do. When he has something to tell you, he tells you in front of everybody. You don’t hear it from some newspaperman. I don’t see why people say he has a big mouth. He knows this business real good and he is doing a great job. He works with the players and he gives them more confidence. Matty Alou never did anything until he came to this man. Donn Clendenon is having his best year and also Willie Stargell. And me, too. That is the reason I want to win so bad. I never played with a club that put out 100 percent like this one. If somebody gets down he comes and talks to the others. No matter what happens, we get together and solve everything. I don’t even think we tried this hard to win in 1960 when they won the pennant and the World Series.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Walker, Clemente Bury Hatchet, Spread Praise" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SnQsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wssEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3539%2C4912308 by the Associated Press, in The Spartanburg Herald (Wednesday, September 28, 1966), p. 12
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>

People , World , Feeling , Confidence

“During every week from April to September there are, on the average, ten wild plants coming into first bloom. … No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them. … Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“July: Prairie Birthday”, p. 44.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

Education , Birthday

“On that day, you decided
That you would walk by yourself
On the endless road
that crosses the clouds [and leads] to the sky
Leaving so much here
I want to tell you and talk about.”

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

Untitled ~For Her~
Lyrics, Guilty

“Just how much abuse will you be able to take? Well, there's no way to tell by the first kiss.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Sweetheart Like You

Way , Kiss

“My own mother is always telling us how well behaved our children are, but little does she know how we got them that way! She would turn grey if she knew, I cane her perfect grandson, but she loves the result.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

Love , Children , Way , Perfection

“The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me.”

Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891) British freethinker, and radical politician

Charles Bradlaugh, in Paul Edwards, "Atheism." Paul Edwards, editor, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1967, vol. 1, p. 177.
Attributed

God

““The intent of the Goddess is neither known nor knowable. She makes us dance, male and female, in ever-converging gyres that bring us ultimately each to our own destiny, and that destiny is always the same and never escapable. She does not tell us why.”
“You said there were no outside forces ordering our lives. That there was nothing but chance and random occurrence.”
He shrugged.
“You did!”
“The Goddess is unknowable and her aims unfathomable, unpredictable, and ineluctable. They might as well be random. We live our brief lives in ignorance and then we die. That’s all.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 7 (p. 101)

Chance , Dance

“… I believe I have come to adopt a cybernetic way of thinking… I became aware of this in the many conversations with students who were worrying about their future and asked for advice. I heard myself telling them that it was far more important to know what one did not want to do, than to have detailed plans of what one did want to do. One day it dawned on me that this was plain cybernetic advice; It is more useful to specify constraints rather than goals. - And then I explained it by adding that in one’s teens or twenties one usually has already discovered a number of things that one cannot stand, whereas it is quite impossible to foresee what, ten or twenty years later, will provide the satisfactions needed to maintain one’s equilibrium.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Glasersfeld (1992, p. 25) cited in: Stuart Umpleby (2007) "Cybernetics: Definitions and Descriptions". In: A Larry Richards Reader 1997–2007. http://polyproject.wikispaces.com/file/view/Larry+Richards+Reader+6+08.pdf. Larry Richards eds.

Way , Thinking , Future

“You know what is good about these Dixie Chicks burnings or bashings? It's a wonderful, wonderful way for really stupid people to hook up. They meet, they throw some things on the fire, they talk about Vin Diesel, they tell stories about who their favorite Fox anchor is, they exchange phone numbers and in some cases has led to marriages.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

standup performance, 2003[citation needed]
Standup routines

Marriage , People , Stupidity , Way

“He must have decided (to retire) during the course of the day. He spoke to me during tea time and said that he has decided to call it quits. It`s the end of an era. A lot of players in the team, I cannot tell you the names, were in tears when he told them his decision. It was an emotional moment for the team and me. He was an extraordinary cricketer, a great role model, not only for the youngsters but also for the future generations.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

By Krishnamachari Srikanth.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

Decision , Tear , Time , Future

“Tell the Trustees I think it is a very good Sickert — but the question is whether he is important enough for the Tate. I think not; but as an old friend of the artist perhaps I am a prejudiced judge.”

James Bolivar Manson (1879–1945) British artist

Quoted in Frances Spalding, The Tate: A History (1998), pp. 62–70. Tate Gallery Publishing, London. ISBN 1854372319.

Question , Thinking

“Aid from heaven you may have," he said, "by saying your prayers; and I don't doubt you ask for this and all other things generally. But an angel won't come to tell you who ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 7

Angels

“A man who works for another is not going to be paid any more than he is worth; you can bet on that. A man ought to get what he can earn. Don't make any difference whether it's running a farm, running a bank or running a show; a man who knows he's making money for other people ought to get some of the profits he brings in. It's business, I tell you. There ain't no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Responding to a reporter asking whether or not he believed that other players merited salaries comparable to his own (i.e. $52,000 a year, as per Ruth's newly signed 1922 contract), as quoted in "Have to Get More of 'Em,' Says Babe Ruth When He Hears of the Income Tax," in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 10, 1922)

Money , People , Business , Forgetting