Quotes about tension
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“Humor is a marvelous communications tool, as Reagan has demonstrated so well. He has weathered many a storm that others might not have. With Reagan, people just say, 'There he goes again.' A sense of humor allows a president to back off a little from the tensions of the moment and take a calmer view of things.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Phil Gailey (June 12, 1988) "Presidential politics should be more of a laughing matter", St. Petersburg Times, p. 5D.

People, Communication, Sense, Weather

“We are being protected from hysteria. Isn't that what they call it? Maniacs! The world's been in a habitual state of crisis for fifty years. Fifty? What am I saying? It's been in a habitual state of crisis since the beginning — but for half a century now, almost unbearable. And why, for the love of God? What is the fundamental irritant, the essence of the tension? Political philosophies? Economics? Population pressure? Disparity of culture and creed? Ask a dozen experts, get a dozen answers. Now Lucifer again. Is the species congenitally insane, Brother?”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 24
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua

Love, God, World

“Music moves us because it serves as a metaphor for emotional life. It has peaks and valleys of tension and release. It mimics the dynamics of our emotional life.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

Australian Broadcasting Corporation http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/5009818 (October 11, 2013)

Life, Music

“Many of us have developed an attitude' one of "we cannot bear to be insulted, and we do not want to create any tension." I always say that if serving the religion in a peaceful and calm manner is all that is demanded of us, then Allah would have accepted such service from His Messenger, peace be upon him, or would have accepted such peaceful service from the Esteemed Companions. But we see that Allah made them go through stages of hardship and tension too. Did not the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, endure tense moments? He waged jihad too. His Holy blood was spilled. Even his blessed teeth were martyred. How many of us have even had a stone thrown at us?; we have adopted the attitude: "One of my routine should not be disturbed; I should keep to my routine."”

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (1964–2007) Pakistani fundamentalist

Instead, we should be prepared for everything, and we should not surrender so easily.

Peace, Religion

“India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom…. The old communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country must go,'it is to be hoped by a slackening of tension, by a progressive understanding of the need of peace and concord, by the constant necessity of common and concerted action, even of an instrument of union for that purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever form'the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, the division must and will go. For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and even frustrated. But that must not be.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August 15, 1947 (A passage from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's independence. August 15 is also Sri Aurobindo's own birthday.)
India's Rebirth

Peace, Hope, Way, Communication

“"This law of the release of tension through illusory valuation gains new significance, full of infinite consequences, for the ressentiment attitude. To its very core, the mind of ressentiment man is filled with envy, the impulse to detract, malice, and secret vindictiveness. These affects have become fixed attitudes, detached from all determinate objects. Independently of his will, this man's attention will be instinctively drawn by all events which can set these affects in motion. The ressentiment attitude even plays a role in the formation of perceptions, expectations, and memories. It automatically selects those aspects of experience which can justify the factual application of this pattern of feeling. Therefore such phenomena as joy, splendor, power, happiness, fortune, and strength magically attract the man of ressentiment. He cannot pass by, he has to look at them, whether he “wants” to or not. But at the same time he wants to avert his eyes, for he is tormented by the craving to possess them and knows that his desire is vain. The first result of this inner process is a characteristic falsification of the world view. Regardless of what he observes, his world has a peculiar structure of emotional stress. The more the impulse to turn away from those positive values prevails, the more he turns without transition to their negative opposites, on which he concentrates increasingly. He has an urge to scold, to depreciate, to belittle whatever he can. Thus he involuntarily “slanders” life and the world in order to justify his inner pattern of value experience.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Happiness, Secret, World

“There is the increasing tension required in the conduct of business which so saps a man's energies as to leave him little of either time or inclination for the cultivation of any other than the business faculty. A tendency to revolt against this is a well-marked feature of the social life of our time. Of what use is it, ask these slaves of the ledger, to spend the greater part of a lifetime in acquiring a competency only to find after it has been acquired that its acquisition has taken all the savour of enjoyment out of life?”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 29

Life, Business, Time, Parting

“The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means “compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man (in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two, and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or “lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and others to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 54-55

Love, World, Way, Feeling

“Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture like Ratz, though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Neuromancer (1984)

Way, Memory, Heart, Night

“These stories offer us a model of how real refreshment of body and spirit is achieved. Three things are worth noting. First, rest comes as an invitation from Jesus. Recently, Pope Francis recommended to a group of priests that they should be open to the rest that comes from Jesus, rather than relying on other ways to relax, some of which can be very unhealthy, if not destructive. We can use entertainment, mind altering substances and other means that only serve as a temporary release of tension and fatigue. Superficial at best, these efforts end up provoking more restlessness and lethargy, especially if they bring upon guilt and depression. It is known, for instance, that alcohol can be a depressant and impact our overall mood. Jesus offers us the gift of rest, and so the first step is to surrender to the kind of rest he offers, and accept his invitation, rather than taking on this burden ourselves. Second, his invitation is to go to an “out of the way” place, a deserted place. This is not an invitation to take a vacation to an exotic location, but rather a summons to enter into those places in our lives that we ignore, yet which have an impact on us.”

Blase J. Cupich (1949) Catholic bishop

"The gift of rest", from the online edition of The Catholic New World, the Chicago archdiocesan newspaper, in the Archbishop's Column (July 26 - August 8, 2015)

Alcohol, Way, Mood, Effort

“I've got no particular desire to play ten minute solos. Those were never valid anyway in my book -- never. It was just a cheap way of building up a tension in the audience…A solo should do something; it shouldn't just be there as a cosmetic. It should have some aim, take the tune somewhere. I'm not saying I can do it, but I try and take the tune somewhere.”

Jeff Beck (1944) English rock guitarist

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 140, 0-679-74275-1]

Books, Way

“An atmosphere of extreme tension reigned during this period; it was necessary to act without mercy. I think that it was justified. If Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Rykov and Zinoviev had started up their opposition in wartime, there would have been an extremely difficult struggle; the number of victims would have been colossal. Colossal. The two sides would have been condemned to disaster. They had links that went right up to Hitler. That far. Trotsky had similar links, without doubt. Hitler was an adventurist, as was Trotsky, they had traits in common. And the rightists, Bukharin and Rykov, had links with them. And, of course, many of the military leaders.”

Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) Soviet politician and diplomat

Quote from Ludo Martens's Another view of Stalin, pp. 177. Original quote from the Russian version of F. Chueva Sto sorok besed s MOLOTOVYM (Moscow: Terra, 1991), p. 413 (The quote does not appear in the French translation: Félix Tchouev, Conversations avec Molotov (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995).) The quote can also be found here http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/molotov.html

Thinking

“We cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

As quoted in Turning Conflict Into Profit : A Roadmap for Resolving Personal and Organizational Disputes (2005) by Larry Axelrod and Rowland Johnson

Life, Birth

“To shoot a grouse exacts something from the thinking man. It requires principle, which like good manners is not old-fashioned and never has been. It is something in your heart and in your head. The perceptive gunner is immersed in the style and charm of his dog’s work and in the shot, but with it all, he is one with what happens to the bird. His shooting is not vindictive, a getting-even because the grouse is so hard to hit. To regret a miss is normal animal response to temporary failure, not to be confused with sentient “the bastard got away.” Emotions are drawn to such thin threads they reach the breaking point, but when finely-honed tensions balance, shooting becomes a spiritual thing between you and the grouse.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Dogs, Fashion, Failure, Bird

“Members of the generation that came of age after World War II-Korean War who join in a relaxation of social and sexual tensions, and who espouse anti-regimentation, mystic-disaffiliation, and material-simplicity values, supposedly as a result of cold-war disillusionment. Coined by Jack Kerouac.”

Jack Kerouac book Beat Generation

Definition of "Beat Generation" offered to Random House publishers in 1959, after being asked him if there was anything he'd like to add to the definition they were preparing for the American College Dictionary: "Certain members of the generation that came of age after World War II who affect detachment from moral and social forms and responsibilities, supposedly the result of disillusionment. Coined by Jack Kerouac." The Random House definition eventually published read: "members of the generation that came of age after World War II who, supposedly as a result of disillusionment stemming from the Cold War, espoused forms of mysticism and the relaxation of social and sexual inhibitions."

War, Age, World

“South Korea, not very tolerant, is an outlier. Although the country is rich, well-educated, peaceful and ethnically homogenous – all trends that appear to coincide with racial tolerance – more than one in three South Koreans said they do not want a neighbor of a different race. This may have to do with Korea's particular view of its own racial-national identity as unique – studied by scholars such as B. R. Myers – and with the influx of Southeast Asian neighbors and the nation's long-held tensions with Japan.”

Max Fisher American journalist

Max Fisher, "A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ (15 May 2013), The Washington Post

Education, Peace, Study, Appearance

“I had long known that there was something about me that was either violent or frightening for some reason. In certain three-sided clothing store images I had for some years come upon myself, with shock and disbelief, regret, and shame, disappointment and despair, for I am indeed clearly violent, mad, and ugly, all because of intensity of some kind, a tension, an obsession with getting everything that there was to be got, a passion, an insanity.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)

Disappointment, Passion, Madness, Despair

“The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus armed.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Men, Silence, Waiting

“First and foremost, yoga made its contribution to my quest to understand consciously the mechanics of violin playing, a quest which by 1951 had long been one of the themes of my life. All influences pointed to less tension, more effective application of energy, the breaking down of resistance in every joint, the coordination of all motions into one motion; and illustrated the profound truth that strength comes not from strength but from the subtle comprehension of process, proportion and balance.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: The Dawn of Indian Music in the West http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OSZKCXtx-wEC&pg=PA46, A&C Black, 24 April 2006, p. 46

Life, Truth, Understanding

“With the election behind us, our country turns hopeful eyes to the future. I have a few hopes of my own. I congratulate our first African-American president-elect. Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly would be proud to see this day. We are stronger for embracing diversity, and I am hopeful that we can continue working through the tensions and wrongs of the past and become a more just and colorblind society. I hope this new administration will help bring us together, and not further divide us. I have always found that freedom is the best way to break down barriers. A free society emphasizes the importance of individuals, and not because they are part of a certain group. That's the only way equal justice can be achieved.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Hopes For the Future https://web.archive.org/web/20120119202026/http://www.ronpaularchive.com/2008/11/hopes-for-the-future/ (November 2008). 2000s, 2006-2009

Justice, Hope, Way, Freedom

“By openly recognizing the inescapable rhythm of harmony and tension which is the form of all human processes unitary man achieves a far-reaching emancipation. Much that was concealed can now stand in the open. The neutrality and objectivity of the quantity symbolism seemed to dissociated man a guarantee of the liberation of the mind from anthropomorphic and subjective illusions. But at deeper level it expressed merely the desire to escape inner conflict in a harmony of static form. This escape was wholly illusory; the superficial neutrality of science left it open to abuse, and the spirit of man has been punished by its attempt to escape struggle in an intellectual harmony. Unitary man renounces such separation and partakes in the development of the whole. Man finds himself in the universal process, by finding the universal process within himself. Tension continues, but henceforward his struggle is with, not against, the process of nature.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 276

Nature, Universe, Science

“Nietzsche saw in the Protestant ethic, in both its religious and secular (economic) forms, a final protest before the emergence into dominance of the ordered, bourgeois world of the ‘last man’—he who will pay any price in tedium for comfort and the absence of tension.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 96

World

“I’m very skeptical in approaching Bach as a clean slate. To understand Bach, one has to be at home in the whole literature of art and interpretation; one must have great experience in performing the complete literature, from Bach until the early avantgarde. I’m absolutely convinced that only by this deep knowledge one can feel the all-embracing range of effects that are compressed in Bach and his music - and how later generations have been inspired. Only by this experience you can give the Bach interpretation a new balance and tension. In the case of the Goldberg Variations we are confronted with these all-emotional effects, and I’m also skeptical whether this all-embracing range can be touched by much too young players, on harpsichord as well as on piano. Knowing the true worth of this condensed and nearly welded-in polyphonic structure and singular musical architecture, one ultimately knows that it is impossible to play with the variations, meaning to change voices, or make doublings. Then the music itself would be robbed of its true worth and sense, which can only be revealed by bringing out the embedded simplicity, which however is transformed to an electrified, heated atmosphere. One has to respect the internal strength.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Art, Music, Feeling, Home

“Between religion's "this is" and poetry's "but suppose this is" there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Anagogic Phase: Symbol as Monad

Religion

“If you will give your representative similar instructions, there is no reason why we should not be able to complete these arrangements and announce them to the world within a couple of days. The effect of such a settlement on easing world tensions would enable us to work toward a more general arrangement regarding "other armaments," as proposed in your second letter which you made public. I would like to say again that the United States is very much interested in reducing tensions and halting the arms race; and if your letter signifies that you are prepared to discuss a detente affecting NATO and the Warsaw Pact, we are quite prepared to consider with our allies any useful proposals.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Second Letter to Nikita Khrushchev

World

“What's disgusting about the Dirty Harry movies is that Eastwood plays this angry tension as righteous indignation.”

Pauline Kael book Hooked

"Pop Mystics," review of Pale Rider (1985-08-12), p. 17.
Hooked (1989)

“The work of Renoir, after that of Cézanne whose great influence had been manifested among artists, save us from whatever drying effect there is in pure abstraction. The rules that one might deduce in considering the work of these two masters appear to be more difficult to discover in the work of Renoir, who hides his efforts better. Whereas the continuous tension of the mind of Cézanne, his lack of self-confidence, prevent him from giving himself to us entirely even though he shows the evidence of his corrections, from which are easily (too easily) deduced rules that have a mathematical precision.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

critical quote on Cubism
In a short text of Matisse, 1918, written for the catalogue of 'Den Franske Utstilling', 1918, Copenhagen; as quoted in Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 272, note 2
1910 - 1920

Quotes, Confidence, Mathematics, Effort

“The idealist seeks the security of a static harmony, and therefore considers every tension evil. Unitary man recognizes tension as an essential feature of the formative process operating in man. Man creates in resolving tensions, but never brings them to an end. The contrasts of past, present and future forms provide an inexhaustible source of tension.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 274

Evil, Past, Future

“There will necessarily be a tension between the church and tradition on one hand and human rights on the other.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Address to the Pacific Regional Workshop on Leadership Development, Lami, Fiji, 9 July 2005.

“The whole history of negotiation with the Soviet Union teaches us that if you do something they want without insisting on something in return, the Soviets do not regard it as a kindness to be reciprocated, but as a weakness to be exploited. There is a lot of fashionable nonsense talked about how we misunderstand Communism, misrepresent Communism, see Communists under every bed. An attempt is being made, it seems, to create an atmosphere where truth and commonsense on these matters is actively discouraged. I believe the people of this country understand better the truth of the matter than those who try to mislead them. We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine detente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750 Leader of the Opposition

People, Truth, History, Communication

“The reckoning with idealism as a view of life is universal, but it also touches on something central in art-its life's substance. One must understand that it is impossible to distinguish between a picture’s form and its substance. As the flower's structure is governed by the intentional tension (when it loses the sap the form is lost), so also with art the substance creates the tension. Form and substance are one and the same. Form is the life expression and substance the living painting.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Life, Art, Flowers, Understanding

“The American Academy of Emergency Medicine confirms it: Each year, between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves. With kitchen tools, usually sometimes wire cutters. In answer to the obvious question, surviving patients most often report that their sexual urges had become a source of intolerable conflict and anxiety. The desire for perfect release and the real-world impossibility of perfect, whenever-you-want-it release had together produced a tension they could no longer stand.”

David Foster Wallace book Consider the Lobster

Big Red Son
Consider the Lobster (2007)

World, Question, Perfection

“It is mutual fear and distrust that mostly generate world tensions and these can be traced in no small measure, like other root causes of worsening world conditions, to different people's conflicting and often intolerant, value-belief differences … Whereas in the past science did little, if anything, to remedy this situation and in some ways made things worse, our reformed "macro-determinist" science that includes consciousness and subjective values … provides common universal ethical foundations on which all nations could work to build a World Government or at least a World Security System to help control nuclear developments and other global threats that require international collaboration.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

The Human Predicament: A Way Out? (1985), p. 3

People, World, Fear, Way

“Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species's lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Eight Little Piggies", p. 77
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Law, History, Intelligence, Nature

“It will take time to get a more settled sense of Thompson’s distinction as a historian and a writer. His work spans too many forms for easy judgement, and its aura can be a temptation to short cuts. But a tension between what might be called his nineteenth and his eighteenth century sensibility was certainly at the creative centre of it.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 8. "In Memoriam, Edward Thompson" (1993)

Sense, Time

“The beast is always doomed. It’s better to face the fact honestly and not pretty it up with a lot of lies about blowing off steam and reducing tensions and getting rid of this and that, acting out anxieties, moment of truth. Piddle. There’s an ancient word, I don’t know what language it is. Bazazz. All those arguments are a lot of bazazz. Unless you’re wiping out vermin or hunting for meat to eat, the man who kills animals does so because he likes to kill. And people who like to watch do so because they like to see things being killed.”

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist

Source: Rogue Dragon (1965), Chapter XI (p. 137)

People, Truth, Animals

“You can see the roughness of structure and the spots like wounds from battles on the canvas. The tops of skyscrapers with windows like eyes constantly remind you that there are laws surrounding the wastelands, and so you hide in the deep grass when you make love to a girl in dirty clothes, and experience how your nerves of seeing become stronger and stronger and every little sound more and more intense. That's what Pasolini's poetry is partly about; he was a street guy and therefore I avoided beautiful new wood or metal for his sculpture... The wasteland was Pasolini's other side; the boys, the knives, the nights, the tensions.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel is referring to the Italian movie-maker Pasolini
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Love, Making love, Law, Beauty

“Like many writers before me, I believe in coincidence and, sometimes, in the novelist’s gift for clairvoyance- the word gift not being the right one, for it implies a kind of superiority. Clairvoyance is simply the part of profession: the essential leaps of imagination, the need to fix one’s mind on detail-to the point of obsession, in fact, so as not to lose the thread and to give in one’s natural laziness. All the, is tension, this cerebral exercise may well lead in the long run to “flashes of intuition concerning events past and future”, as defined by Larousse dictionary under “clairvoyance.””

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

Source: The Search Warrant (2000), pp. 47-48

Exercises, Imagination, Nature, Past

“What's evil for the hawk is the mouse because, you know, the mouse is quick and gets away but I did this one realization every scientist goes through at one point… if you gave the hawk power, the power of God, the first thing the hawk might do is to slow down the mouse. But then the hawk would lose it's speed. And then if you slow the mouse all the way down, so it can just barely move, the hawk would lose its flight. So that in a weird way the tension between those two say natural enemies is what gives birth to their beauty. So I definitely feel that the tension we have right now within the human community in particular — that those are ultimately going to be resolved with a deeper harmony and a deeper appreciation for one another.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

God, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“The moderns contended that the concentration on virtue contradicts the concern for well-being. Aristotle admitted that “equipment” as well as virtue is necessary for happiness, but he said nothing about how that equipment is acquired. A careful examination of the acquisition of equipment reveals that virtue impedes that acquisition. Liberality, for example, presupposes money and not caring for it overmuch. But one must care for it to get it. Moreover, spending money exhausts it, so that liberality makes the need for acquisitiveness greater than it would have been without the virtue. Liberality both discourages and encourages acquisitiveness, putting man in contradiction with himself. … The miser is not likely to need to steal. And his quest for profit can, properly channeled, produce benefits for others. In the old system he is given a bad conscience and a bad name. But it would seem that nature is not kind to man, if the two elements of happiness—virtue and equipment—are at tension with one another. Equipment is surely necessary, so why not experiment with doing without virtue? If a substitute for virtue can be found, the inner conflict that renders man’s life so hard could be resolved.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” pp. 282-283.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Life, Money, Happiness, Nature

“Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light… We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think."…, but I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"Foreword", Lanterns & Lances (1961)
From other writings

Life, World, Fear, Thinking

“But the bilingualists simplistically scorn the value and necessity of assimilation. They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality. Supporters of bilingual education thus want it both ways. They propose bilingual schooling as a way of helping students acquire the skills of the classroom crucial for public success. But they likewise insist that bilingual instruction will give students a sense of their identity apart from the public. Behind this screen there gleams an astonishing promise: One can become a public person while still remaining a private person. At the very same time one can be both! There need be no tension between the self in the crowd and the self apart from the crowd! Who would not want to believe such an idea?”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Education, School, Way, Idea

“I can say without fear of falling into the slightest exaggeration that each outline of a rock, / and / of the beaches of Cadaques [in North-Spain, where Dali spent his childhood], each of the geological anomalies of its landscape and its unique light I know by heart, for in the paths of my wandering solitudes, it was these silhouettes of stones and its states of light attached to the structure / and the aesthetic substance / of the landscape that were the sole protagonists on the mineral impossibility of which I project day after day all the accumulated and chronically unsatisfied tension of mt erotic-emotional life.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from the catalog of the exhibition 'Dali una vida de libro', Bibliotheca de Catalunya, Barcelona 2004
Dali's memory is written in a mixture of French and Catalan accent
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1981 - 1989

Life, Fear, Solitude, Light

“In reference to dealing with black issues and dealing with issues that plague those minority communities, Donald Trump doesn't have a racist bone in his body. I know what real racism is. And Donald Trump is so far from it. Talking to him and his wonderful wife and his children is like hanging out with some friends of mine that are black … He's just that kind of a person. He is not uneasy around you. He's very relaxed… When Donald Trump talks about 'the blacks' he's talking about the blacks, the group as a whole. He's talking about the groups… No, it doesn't bother me, because I know Donald Trump. I know who he is. I know he is not at all speaking in any derogatory sense at all. He's simply talking to that ethnic group, the blacks or the whites… Even with a sitting black President, the racial tension in this country is at an all-time high. And I believe it's led by the Democratic party and led by President Barack Obama, and obviously Secretary Clinton desires to continue that torch, which I believe will lead us more and more into economic destruction, especially for minorities in this country… I have not experienced racist tension from Donald Trump. I'm from the South. Literally right over the next county, there are active KKK groups that parade their rebel flag on a daily basis… This is in 2016. Right now, today, with a sitting black President. So I know what real racism looks like. And it is not Donald Trump… Does he want it (ex-KKK leaders endorsement)? He said, 'No, I don't want it, I don't accept it.' … He doesn't stand for any hate groups, whether it be a Christian hate group or an Islam hate group. He's already stated this. Mr. Trump has already stated that there was a technical issue in the earpiece. I'm in television; I own a TV studio. I do know how technical issues can cause you to miss out on what someone is saying.”

Mark Burns (televangelist) (1979) Christian pastor and founder of the NOW Television Network

Interview, New York Daily News, 15 May 2016 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/meet-female-muslim-mexican-american-trump-supporters-article-1.2637077

Hate, Children, Communication, Sense

“Tension weakens the bow; the want of it, the mind.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 59
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“Hitchcock was a character. In one particularly scary scene I had to sneak down a dark corridor. When I got to the end there was Mr. Hitchcock, sticking out his tongue and flapping his hands in the back of his ears. I didn't dare laugh, because the cameras were turning. But he certainly eliminated any tension I felt.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

“Tension between two or several social entities (individual, group or organizations) which arises from incompatibility of actual or desired responses.”

Arie W. Kruglanski (1939) American psychologist

Source: "Conflict and power." 1970, p. 70

“It is a better world with some buffalo left in it, a richer world with some gorgeous canyons unmarred by signboards, hot-dog stands, super highways, or high-tension lines, undrowned by power or irrigation reservoirs. If we preserved as parks only those places that have no economic possibilities, we would have no parks. And in the decades to come, it will not be only the buffalo and the trumpeter swan who need sanctuaries. Our own species is going to need them too. It needs them now.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

This is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and its Magic Rivers is a collection of essays and photographs edited by Wallace Stegner and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1955. This passage is from the collection's first essay, "The Marks of Human Passage", which is by Stegner (page 17).

World, Dogs

“Things evolve to evolve. Evolutionary processes are the linchpin of change. These processes of discovery represent a complexity of simple systems that flux in perpetual tension as they teeter at the edge of chaos. This whirlwind of emergence is responsible for the spontaneous order and higher, organized complexity so noticeable in biological evolution—one–celled critters beefing up to become multicellular organisms.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 335

Change

“Stone can effectively resist compression but is relatively weak in tension. Because of its mass and weight it may be used advantageously in structural types that can be made stable by the proper weight (dead load, gravity) and are but slightly exposed to lateral forces.”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

p, 125
Philosophy of Structures (1958)

Dead

“Washington's adventuristic policy, whipping up international tension to the utmost, is pushing mankind towards nuclear catastrophe.”

Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) Soviet politician

Quoted in "Speeches and Writings: Leaders of the World" - Page 186 - by Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko - Political Science - 1984

“Content is nothing but the sum of organized tensions. From this point of view one can discover the basic identity of the rules of composition in all arts – always accepting that the arts can only represent their object materially by means of organised reactions.... already today one can safely assume that the roots of laws of composition are the same for art as they are for nature.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from: 'Analysis of the Primary Elements of Painting', W. Kandinsky, 1928
1920 - 1930

Law, Art, Nature

“Our first play in 1981 was Jean Genet’s The Balcony, a prophetic choice, set in Paris in turmoil, just as London was being torched during the Brixton riots, an explosion of racial tensions that had been simmering for some time. I insisted on casting a Caribbean actress to play the lead, Irma the Madam of the Brothel.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

Time

“This behavior not only exacerbates tensions in its own right; it has the effect of stifling community confidence that’s absolutely vital for effective policing. And this, in turn, deepens the widespread distrust provoked by the department’s other unconstitutional exercises of police power – none of which is more harmful than its pattern of excessive force.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Behavior, Exercises, Confidence, Communication

“So many forces and resources would become available if States, aware (or conscious) of their true (or real) mission, would want to get on (or agree) to abolish every politics aiming at ("visant à", Fr.) expansion or hegemony; system that maintain among nations a a perpetual distrust and tension, impose on them (or force or compel, "leur impose", Fr.) formidable armies and crushing war budgets.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 54.

War

“SEWA is about political action, and that has always been at the heart of what we have done. It is about changing the balance of power in favor of the poor. That has meant constant tension, with big farmers, moneylenders, contractors, big traders, government, local panchayats, and so on.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

Change, Heart

“Our sense of touch is a fundamental sensibility which comes into action at birth – our stereognostic sense – the ability to feel weight and form and assess its significance. The form which have had special meaning for me since childhood have been the standing form (which is the translation of my feelings towards the human being standing in the landscape) the two forms (which is the tender relation of one living thing besides another); and the closed form, such as the oval, spherical or pierced form (sometimes incorporating colour) which translates for me the association and meaning of gesture in landscape; in the repose of say a mother and child.... In all these shapes the translation of what one feels about man and nature must be conveyed by the sculptor in terms of mass, inner tension, and rhythm, scale in relation to our human size and the quality of surface which speaks through our hands and eyes.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial autobiography', 1970, p. 284

Feeling, Birth, Nature, Sense

“Although founded on majority rule, a democratic society must recognize and apply individual, minority and group rights. In other words, majority rule must be understood within the context of the rule of law and human dignity… This resolves the tension between populism and human rights, since democracy must not be abused to diminish human rights, e. g. by legitimizing torture or capital punishment, even if public opinion could be invoked or manipulated to demand it. Thus, it is necessary to strengthen the enforcement of national and regional bills of rights to provide a process and atmosphere for democracy to flourish, ensured by an independent judiciary that provides the necessary protection of both majority and minority interests.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas 2013 Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order
2013

Law, Democracy

“Humans are the between before and beyond. Ever elusive and ever tensional”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Between Before and Beyond, p. 7.

“Because of the tension and difficulty, I remember trying to do the silliest things when we weren't rolling cameras, anything to lift the spirits. But once on set, it was important to have full concentration. And I genuinely liked all of the cast members very much.”

Madeleine Stowe (1958) American actress

Mohican Press interview (2005)

“Whatever "Cold War system" there might once have been here is already defunct. There was never such a system in the minds of the opposed leaders, despite the peninsula’s tragic importance to Moscow and Washington. It might have been better if there had been. I’m not being flippant. Germans in East and West benefited from how each system tried to prove itself more compassionate and democratic, more conducive to its citizens' realization of their potential than the other. The relevant standards could hardly have been more different, but still. In contrast North and South Korea slid quickly into mutual nationalist recrimination, with each side accusing the other of subservience to a foreign power. This (not the over-weighted fact that Ossis and Wessis never clashed on the battlefield) is the main reason Bonn and East Berlin were able to maintain a coldly civil working relationship, routinizing mail service, family reunions, transit, etc, even at the height of Cold War tension.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

War, Family

“The category “society” itself expressed the acute conflict between the social and political sphere—society as antagonistic to the state. Similarly, “individual,” “class,” “private,” “family” denoted spheres and forces not yet integrated with the established conditions—spheres of tension and contradiction. With the growing integration of industrial society, these categories are losing their critical connotation, and tend to become descriptive, deceptive, or operational terms. An attempt to recapture the critical intent of these categories, and to understand how the intent was cancelled by the social reality, appears from the outset to be regression from a theory joined with historical practice to abstract, speculative thought: from the critique of political economy to philosophy. This ideological character of the critique results from the fact that the analysis is forced to proceed from a position “outside” the positive as well as negative, the productive as well as destructive tendencies in society.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. xlvi

Family, Understanding, Reality, Appearance

“Detente sounds a fine word. And, to the extent that there really has been a relaxation in international tension, it is a fine thing. But the fact remains that throughout this decade of detente, the armed forces of the Soviet Union have increased, are increasing, and show no signs of diminishing.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750 Leader of the Opposition

“Just as counterpoint and harmony follow their own laws, and differ in rhythm and movement, both formal tensions and color tensions have a development of their own in accordance with the inherent laws from which they are separately derived. Both, however, aim toward the realization of the same image. And both deal with the depth problem.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 45
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Law, Color, Problem

“What kind of political order, then, is taking shape in Europe, 15 years after Maastricht? The pioneers of European integration – Monnet and his fellow spirits – envisaged the eventual creation of a federal union that would one day be the supranational equivalent of the nation-states out of which it emerged, anchored in an expanded popular sovereignty, based on universal suffrage, its executive answerable to an elected legislature, and its economy subject to requirements of social responsibility. In short, a democracy magnified to semi-continental scale (they had only Western Europe in mind). But there was always another way of looking at European unification, which saw it more as a limited pooling of powers by member governments for certain – principally economic – ends, that did not imply any fundamental derogation of national sovereignty as traditionally understood, but rather the creation of a novel institutional framework for a specified range of transactions. De Gaulle famously represented one version of this outlook; Thatcher another. Between these federalist and inter-governmentalist visions of Europe, there has been a continual tension down to the present.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

"Depicting Europe", London Review of Books (20 September 2007)

Way, Democracy, Universe

“The possibility for compassionate concern for others, which is present in all humans, is usually mixed with the sense of ego and so becomes confused with the need to satisfy one's own cravings for recognition and self-evaluation. The spontaneous compassion that arises when one is not caught in the habitual patterns - when one is not perfoming volitional actions out of karmic cause and effect - is not done with a sense of need for feedback from its recipient. It is the anxiety about feedback - the response of the other - that causes us tension and inhibition in our action. When action is done withouth the business-deal mentality, there can be relaxation. This is called supreme (or transcendental) generosity.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Source: The Embodied Mind (1991), p. 249

Business, Sense

“The Prime Minister said…that where I failed, for all my brilliant gifts, was in the faculty of judging. I will gladly submit my judgement about foreign affairs and national defence during the last five years, in comparison with his own. … In February the Prime Minister said the tension in Europe had greatly relaxed. A few weeks later Nazi Germany seized Austria. I predicted that he would repeat this statement as soon as the shock of the rape of Austria passed away. He did so in the very same words at the end of July. By the middle of August Germany was mobilising…which…ended in the complete destruction and absorption of the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia. … in November…he told us that Europe was settling down to a more peaceful state. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the Nazi atrocities on the Jewish population resounded throughout the civilised world.”

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

Speech in Chingford (9 December 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 1025
The 1930s

World, Peace

“Tensions in this country are high. Our nation is as divided politically as I can ever remember. On the issue of the day, people run to their political camps as quickly as possible and begin hurling insults at those with whom they disagree. Our founders knew what they were doing when they designed our form of government. They knew that an adversarial system of governance would best ensure our liberties were protected, but could at times create strong disagreement among the American people. But disagreement is okay. It beats the alternative of tyranny.”

Jay Ashcroft (1973)

Responding to President Trump’s Request for Missouri Voter Information http://ashcroftformissouri.com/2017/07/02/responding-to-president-trumps-request-for-missouri-voter-information/ (July 2, 2017)

People, Strong, Time, Country

“It gives my brain a rest, painting flowers. I don't feel the same tension as when I have a model in front of me. When I paint flowers, I put on colours and try out values boldly, without worrying about wasting a canvas. I wouldn't dare to do it with a figure; I'd be afraid of spoiling the whole thing. And the experience I gain this way is then applied to my pictures.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 196 : quote on painting flowers, to art-buyer George Riviere, who was watching a flower still-life of Renoir.

Way, Feeling, Flowers, Painting

“The tension felt in the modern world between those who look at the confluence of neuroscientific data, historical data, and other information illuminating our past and those who simply accept received wisdom as their guide in life is real and profound. Yet it may not be as divisive as one would think. It appears that all of us share the same moral networks and systems, and we all respond in similar ways to similar issues. The only thing different, then, is not our behavior but our theories about why we respond the way we do. It seems to me that understanding that our theories are the source of all our conflicts would go a long way in helping people with different belief systems to get along.”

Michael S. Gazzaniga (1939) American neuroscientist

The Ethical Brain (2005)

Life, Wisdom, People, World

“If I had to choose one which best characterized the condition of being a political leader in Athens, the word would be "tension."”

Moses I. Finley (1912–1986) American historian

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 60

“Maynard Keynes was born into a certain civilisation at a particular moment of history, and was one of its foremost products. He inherited both its aspirations and its tensions. He grew up in the shadow of its great figures, notably Henry Sidgwick and Alfred Marshall, the teachers and colleagues of is father. His style of thought and way of life both bear Cambridge's unmistakable imprint.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (2003), Ch. 2. Cambridge Civilisation: Sidgwick and Marshall

Life, Way, History, Teachers

“The hands of the guilty don't necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.”

Graham Greene book The Third Man

The Third Man (1949)

Study

“If Walter Bagehot was right that “one of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea,” Ken caused an extraordinary amount of pain. Both in his economic thinking and in his political activities, he was dedicated to resisting, and where possible overturning, what he famously called “conventional wisdom” (one of his many turns of phrase that have since become commonplace locutions). Rejecting the standard economic theory based on small, anonymous households and firms that autonomously engage in perfectly functioning markets, Ken instead saw an economic stage dominated by large, nameable actors: big business, big labor, big government. Sorting out their roles and respective power was central to his analysis, and the continually shifting tensions in the interplay among them—“countervailing power” in another of his deft phrases—was the real story of how an economy behaved.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Stephen A. Marglin, Richard Parker, Amartya Sen, and Benjamin M. Friedman, “John Kenneth Galbraith”, Harvard Gazette (February 7, 2008)
2000s

Wisdom, Pain, Idea, Business

“The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war.”

E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) British economist

Source: Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973), p. 31.

Wisdom, War, Fear, Peace

“At a time in our history when the streets of the Nation's cities inspire fear and despair, rather than pride and hope, it is difficult to maintain objectivity and concern for our fellow citizens. But, the measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis. No nation in the recorded history of man has a greater tradition of revering justice and fair treatment for all its citizens in times of turmoil, confusion, and tension than ours. This is a country which stands tallest in troubled times, a country that clings to fundamental principles, cherishes its constitutional heritage, and rejects simple solutions that compromise the values that lie at the roots of our democratic system.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, Concurring opinion (January 17, 1972)

Lie, Fear, Justice, Hope

“Democratic experimentalism sees the core of the good of human liberation in a softening of the tension between two great competing demands upon our vitality and greatnessː the need to engage in group life and the need to diminish the price, in subjugation and loss of self-identity, that we regularly pay for such engagement.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Democracy Realizedː The Progressive Alternative (1998), p. 165

Life, Loss

“The concept of peace is easy to grasp; that of international security is more complex, for a pattern of contradictions has arisen here as well. As major nuclear Powers have begun to negotiate arms reduction agreements, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction threatens to increase and conventional arms continue to be amassed in many parts of the world. As racism becomes recognized for the destructive force it is and as apartheid is being dismantled, new racial tensions are rising and finding expression in violence. Technological advances are altering the nature and the expectation of life all over the globe. The revolution in communications has united the world in awareness, in aspiration and in greater solidarity against injustice. But progress also brings new risks for stability: ecological damage, disruption of family and community life, greater intrusion into the lives and rights of individuals.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

An Agenda for Peace : Preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peace-keeping (1992)
1990s

Life, World, Family, Peace

“This perpetual toggling between nothing being new, under the sun, and everything having very recently changed, absolutely, is perhaps the central driving tension of my work.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

At the Booksmith http://litseen.com/?p=7466, reading from Distrust That Particular Flavor. (19 January 2012).

Change, Sun

“Exhibitions of minority art are often intended to make the minority itself more aware of its collective experience. Reinforcing the common memory of miseries and triumphs will, it is expected, strengthen the unity of the group and its determination to achieve a better future. But emphasizing shared experience as opposed to the artist's consciousness of self (which includes his personal and unshared experience of masterpieces) brings to the fore the tension in the individual artist between being an artist and being a minority artist.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 273, "Being Outside"

Art, Memory, Future, Personality

“Having been informed of events by Vice-Chancellor von Papen, President Hindenburg summoned General Goering, in his capacity of Chief of Police, and myself to Neudeck. Our instructions are to consult with you on the measures to be taken to ensure internal peace. If a complete relaxation of tension does not immediately take place (and to this end we must avoid any ministerial crisis), martial law will be proclaimed.”

Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946) German field marshal

Quoted in "Hitler and I" - Page 186 - by Otto Strasser, Gwenda David, Eric Mosbacher - Germany - 1940

Peace, Law

“Social production is not a panacea; it is just an alternative. Although we are better off being able to use it when it is valuable, it brings its own challenges, just as production via firms and governments does. Even the simplest pooled effort or voluntary participation can be fraught with tension among the individual participants, and between those individuals and the group. Like many aspects of social life, this problem has no solution; the dilemma can be addressed only by various compromises, none of them wholly satisfactory. One way to help a group of participants improve their ability to function together is the creation and maintenance of shared culture.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Life, Way, Problem, Effort

“Many grand notions and titles have over time attached themselves to this place: a paradise at the southern tip of Africa, the world’s richest floral kingdom, a maritime fulcrum between West and East, a European outpost at the foot of the continent, the Tavern of the Seas. But the two names that are the most potent are also two of the earliest: the contradictory claims of this being both a Cape of Storms and a Cape of Good Hope. The tension between these ideas encapsulates many of the tensions of this city.
Legend has it that the first Portuguese navigator to round the southern tip of Africa, Bartolomeu Dias, named this stormy peninsula Cabo das Tormentas. However, King João II rejected Dias’s name in favour of one that would be more inspirational for the Portuguese people: Cabo da Boa Esperança. The turning point for the Lusitanian caravels would spell untold riches in the East. But the dialectic between the two contending titles is as virile today in a city whose promise is limitless and whose socio-political storms act as a sea anchor.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

People, World, Hope, Idea

“Focusing purely on extremism, whether in the Arab-Islamic world or the West, will not alleviate the root causes of tensions between members of different cultures. It will only alienate those who do not recognise themselves in those stereotypes, and generate fear and misunderstanding.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.390

World, Fear

“American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"The Academic Environment" p. 47 ( Hathi Trust http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3923968?urlappend=%3Bseq=63) Character and Opinion in the United States (1920)

Life, Confidence, Optimism, Self-confidence

“When you use a camera, your visual concentration is intense, as it is when you draw. But if you overshoot, your contact sheet is likely to become a jumble of peelings. You need a lot of sand to discover a nugget. Shooting is a play between pickpocketing and tightrope walking; an endless play, fraught with huge tension.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, An Endless Play: Interview with Gilles Mora (1986), p. 102

Drawing

“Ha! I’ve heard about these reports. I think it’s another provocation, coming just before NATO war games on Georgian territory that were in complete disregard of Russia’s warnings. If this is aimed at drawing other participants of the war games into the conflict — prompted by statements from the Georgian government — then this only proves that we were 100% right when we warned those taking part in the war games not to do so as it will lead heighten tensions sharply.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Regarding the reported coup in Georgia. Interview with Euronews (May 2009) http://www.euronews.com/2009/05/06/no-link-between-iran-and-us-missile-shield-lavrov-tells-euronews/

War, Game, Thinking, Parting

“The Goldberg Variations have always enjoyed a special status, with pianists regarding them as a touchstone of their technical and interpretative powers. At stake are the ability to light up the work from within, a tightrope walk that at the same time describes a vast circle, starting out and returning to a state of apotheotic stillness, the ability to find one’s bearings within a particular concentration of inner and outer complexity, an inner and outer coherence and homogeneity that are all-embracing, the ability, finally, to produce an explosion of inner cells by reduced means and, hence, a particular sensitivity, sinewy tension, and color. The performer must play a game with particular devices, finding solutions to the problems posed by the work not in octave doublings and other playful expedients but in a tightly structured inner rigor and order. What is demanded is a particular form of internalization, of inner and outer lyricism. It is this that makes the Goldberg Variations so unique - and so demanding.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Color, Game, Problem, Light

“We have a tendency to overcome any strong tension between desire and impotence by depreciating or denying the positive value of the desired object.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 73

Strong

“Dialectical thought understands the critical tension between “is” and “ought” first as an ontological condition, pertaining to the structure of Being itself. However, the recognition of this state of Being — its theory — intends from the beginning a concrete practice. Seen in the light of a truth which appears in them falsified or denied, the given facts themselves appear false and negative.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 133

Truth, Understanding, Light, Appearance

“In developped countries, successive governments have always acted like firemen putting out fires instead of architects designing new buildings. The tax loopholes they have created are responses to emotions provoked by a given event, or an attempt to ease social tension caused by taxpayer exasperation (and/or reflecting their power). Any rational global management policy must satisfy two imperatives: simplicity; and stability.”

Éric Pichet (1960) economist

General Theory of Social and Tax Expenditures and Proposals for Recasting the French System of Tax 'Loopholes' https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2841200 Article in Revue de Droit Fiscal n36 (2016). Tax policy, Tax and Social Expenditures

Success, Country

“This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Context: And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Dreams, Birth, Solitude, Time

“He took their facts for granted. He knew no more than a firefly about rays — or about race or sex — or ennui — or a bar of music — or a pang of love — or a grain of musk — or of phosphorus — or conscience — or duty — or the force of Euclidian geometry — or non-Euclidian — or heat — or light — or osmosis — or electrolysis — or the magnet — or ether — or vis inertiae — or gravitation — or cohesion — or elasticity — or surface tension — or capillary attraction — or Brownian motion — or of some scores, or thousands, or millions of chemical attractions, repulsions or indifferences which were busy within and without him; or, in brief, of Force itself, which, he was credibly informed, bore some dozen definitions in the textbooks, mostly contradictory, and all, as he was assured, beyond his intelligence.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Love, Music, Sex, Intelligence

“It would be ridiculous to claim that gay men are interested only on other gay men and would never ogle straight men in barracks showers. When I heard this one on TV, I burst out laughing. Anyone who belongs to a health club knows better. Sexual tension and appraisal are constants, above all among gay men, who never stop cruising everything in sight. Seduction of straight studs is a highly erotic motif in gay porn.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 87

Men, Health

“I believe when you bring, say, a plant into a room, everything in that room changes in relation to it. This tension — tension is the only word for it — can be painted.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Time Magazine (20 October 1952).

Change, Painting

“When I am painting, driven by lively tensions, I want to express what’s going on in me. When that tension has ceased, when the life in me became visible, then something happened which had to happen. Over and over again you experience a work which is created in this way. What happened? It is hard to say, because it was not my mind that led but the inner desire that revealed its inner life.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

Letter to H.P. Bremmer, 17-11-1930, City Archive The Hague, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 50 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1930's

Life, Way, Painting

“We live in an essential and unresolvable tension between our unity with nature and our dangerous uniqueness. Systems that attempt to place and make sense of us by focusing exclusively either on the uniqueness or the unity are doomed to failure. But we must not stop asking and questing because the answers are complex and ambiguous.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

"Our Natural Place", p. 250
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

Failure, Nature, Sense

“Eighteen years ago the advent of nuclear weapons changed the course of the world as well as the war. Since that time, all mankind has been struggling to escape from the darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth. In an age when both sides have come to possess enough nuclear power to destroy the human race several times over, the world of communism and the world of free choice have been caught up in a vicious circle of conflicting ideology and interest. Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty speech

War, Age, World, Communication