Quotes about tent (150 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scoured by any white-light religion.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

As quoted in the Introduction by Burton H. Wolfe
The Satanic Bible (1969)

Men , God , Children , Religion

“It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

On FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as quoted in The New York Times (31 October 1971).
1970s

“If you go to the protests now, you will see something you never saw before: hundreds of women. They shout and sing, they even sleep there in tents. This is not just a political revolution, it's a social revolution”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Tawakul Karman, Yemeni activist, and thorn in the side of Saleh (2011)

Women , Sleep , Singing

“It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Science

“She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Love

“Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

World

“The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)

“We are already justified in the conviction that human life as we know it in history is a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance; and that it could be transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge and comprehension, just as our modern control of physical nature based on science transcends the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, that were rooted in superstition and professional secrecy.
To do this, we must study the possibilities of creating a more favourable social environment, as we have already done in large measure with our physical environment.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

Transhumanism (1957)

Life , History , Nature , Knowledge

“I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. I, st. 3
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

“Hidden in hollows and behind clumps of rank brambles were large tents, dimly lighted with candles, but looking comfortable. The kind of comfort they supplied was indicated by pairs of men entering and reappearing, bearing litters; by low moans from within and by long rows of dead with covered faces outside. These tents were constantly receiving the wounded, yet were never full; they were continually ejecting the dead, yet were never empty. It was as if the helpless had been carried in and murdered, that they might not hamper those whose business it was to fall to-morrow.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), V

Men , Business , Light , Dead

“A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.”

Bertrand Russell book Religion and Science

Religion and Science (1935), Ch. I: Ground of Conflict
1930s

Truth , Science

“The U. S. is a mere pup tent of a civilization. We’ve got two hundred years of stupidity behind us and we think we’re right up there with everyone else who’s been doing it for thousands of years.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Oui interview (1979)

Stupidity , Thinking

“Aww, did I just become the most popular person in this tent?”

Kresley Cole book Dead of Winter

Source: Dead of Winter

Personality

“I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods

Sleep

“We search for patterns, you see, only to find where the patterns break. And it’s there, in that fissure, that we pitch our tents and wait.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Search , Waiting

“And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

St. 11.
The Day is Done (1845)

Music , Night

“Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?"
"The plan is insane," Ehren said. "YOU are insane." He looked around the inside of the tent. "I'll need some pants.”

Jim Butcher Captain's Fury

Source: Captain's Fury

“So let me get this straight. You were living in a tent in the woods, but now you're living with Prince Charming and anger management boy? SERIOUSLY?!”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 2

Boy , Anger

“Oh, no way," Leo said. "We've been sitting in a cave and you get the luxury tent? Somebody give me hypothermia. I want hot chocolate and a parka!”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Way

“As she shuffled back, he glanced down at the tent between his legs. Christ, that goddamn thing in there was huge; he looked like he had another arm in his pants.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

Christ

“It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Travel

“Happy Birthday."
Adrian came to a sudden halt. The words were soft and small, spoken tentatively, but easily discerned by vampire ears. Slowly, he turned around and found Jill Mastrano standing shyly before him.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Adrian's Lost Chapter

Birthday , Happiness

“Academics were not intellectuals; they were not curious, they built their stolid tents of specialized knowledge and stayed securely in them.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah

Knowledge

“You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea and you always double knot your shoelaces.' I fight back. Then I dive back into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: But more words tumble out. 'You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.'

Then I dive into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.
Source: Mockingjay

Stupidity , Sleep , Fight , Tea

“And so class will some day supplant race in world affairs. Race war will then be merely a side-show to the gigantic class war which will be waged in the big tent we call the world.”

Ralph Bunche (1904–1971) American diplomat

Unsourced

War , World

“I have looked attentively at chickens raised in this [battery] fashion, and to me they seem to be unhappy and in poor health. Their combs are dull and lifeless except for glaring and unnatural patches of color that appear occasionally … The battery chickens I have observed seem to lose their minds about the time they would normally be weaned by their mothers and off in the weeds chasing grasshoppers on their own account. Yes, literally, actually, the battery becomes a gallinaceous madhouse. The eyes of these chickens through the bars gleam like those of maniacs. Let your hand get within reach and it receives a dozen vicious peeks—not the love peck or the tentative peek of idle curiosity bestowed by the normal chicken, but a peck that means business, a peck for flesh and blood, for which in their madness they are thirsting.”

Roy Bedichek (1878–1959) American writer and naturalist

Adventures with a Texas Naturalist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Orig. pub. 1947), pp. 101 https://books.google.it/books?id=4WuzlD0hkSgC&pg=PA101-102.

Love , Health , Color , Fashion

“Sultan Mahmud at first designed in his heart to go to Sijistan, but subsequently preferred engaging previously in a holy war against Hind, and he distributed arms prior to convening a council on the subject, in order to secure a blessing on his designs, of exalting the standard of religion, of widening the plain of right, of illuminating the words of truth, and of strengthening the power of justice. He departed towards the country of Hind, in full reliance on the aid of Allah, who guiding by his light and by his power, bestowed dignity upon him, and gave him victory in all expeditions. On his reaching Purshaur (Peshawar), he pitched his tent outside the city…”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the defeat of Jaipal. Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 24-25.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

War , Truth , Religion , Justice

“The gipsy tents are on the down,
The gipsy girls are here;
And it's O to be off and away from the town
With a gipsy for my dear!”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

Gipsy Love, st. 1.

Girl

“When conspiracies have governmental powers, they can usually cover up their guilt at the time and they often destroy evidence so thoroughly that later generations are left with a puzzle they can solve only partially or tentatively. We now know only that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was arranged by a conspiracy for the dual purpose of eliminating a political figure who was no longer useful and of exciting fresh animosity against the Southerners who had been conquered, and whose country had been destroyed, in the unconscionable war of aggression of which he had been the ostensible leader; but, aside from a few hirelings, the only person whom we can positively identify as a member of the conspiracy is Stanton, who was the Secretary of War in Lincoln’s cabinet, arranged many of the practical details, and was able, after the event, to silence key witnesses, although we can only guess what it was they knew that made it necessary to have them judicially murdered. And Stanton seems to have been only a local manager for principals whose identity we can only surmise.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

War , Silence , Time , Personality

“Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. 'Experience! More experience!' I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.”

Henry Miller book Plexus

The Rosy Crucifixion II : Plexus (1953)

Life , World , Dreams , Reality

“There have been violations in the protest squares, especially in Sana'a. This is natural when hundreds of thousands of people [protest] for extended periods of time. However, these violations are marginal, and do not tarnish the beauty of the revolution. We see rival tribes meeting and debating in their tents, and men and women struggling [together] in the square to oust the regime.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman – A Profile (2011)

Women , Men , People , Beauty

“Everything that has been said, and every conclusion that has been tentatively put forward, is quite frankly speculative and uncertain. We have tried to discuss whether present-day science has anything to say on certain difficult questions, which are perhaps set for ever beyond the reach of human understanding. We cannot claim to have discerned more than a very faint glimmer of light at the best; perhaps it was wholly illusory, for certainly we had to strain our eyes very hard to see anything at all. So that our main contention can hardly be that the science of to-day has a pronouncement to make, perhaps it ought rather to be that science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.”

James Jeans book The Mysterious Universe

The closing sentences of the book, on p. 188 of Pelican Books 1938 reprint of 1931 2nd ed.
The Mysterious Universe (1930)

Understanding , Question , Knowledge , Light

“The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, st. 2 (1858).

Death , Sleep , Tree

“Diophantus shows great Adroitness in selecting the unkown, especially with a view to avoiding an adfected quadratic…. The most common and characteristic of Diophantus' methods is his use of tentative assumptions which is applied in nearly every problem of the later books. It consists in assigning to the unknown a preliminary value which satisfies one or two only of the necessary conditions, in order that, from its failure to satisfy the remaining conditions, the operator may perceive what exactly is required for that purpose…. a third characteristic of Diophantus [is]… the use of the symbol for the unknown in different senses…. The use of tentative assumptions leads again to another device which may be called… the method of limits. This may best be illustrated by a particular example. If Diophantus wishes to find a square lying between 10 and 11, he multiplies these numbers by successive squares till a square lies between the products. Thus between 40 and 44, 90 and 99 no square lies, but between 160 and 176 there lies the square 169. Hence x^2 = \tfrac{169}{16} will lie between the proposed limits.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884)

Lie , Books , Lying , Failure

“The Mockery Bird regarded him with a roguish eye, head on one side, and took a few slow steps into the clearing. With its head on one side and its foot tentatively raised, it seemed like some sort of lanky, avian dancing master. It stepped forward among the guava stems with a mincing delicacy and then shuffled its wings like someone shuffling a pack of cards. He noticed that it had very long eyelashes which it raised and lowered over its large gaily-sparkling eyes. … There was another complicated rustle and flurry in the undergrowth and then, projected into the clearing by its own nervous eagerness, came a female Mockery Bird making strange, peeting noises, which became a soothing babble when she caught sight of the male. She went up to her mate and briefly preened his throat feathers as an over-zealous wife will straighten the tie of her consort. … Here in front of him, cossetting each other, were two birds which were thought to be extinct.”

Gerald Durrell book The Mockery Bird

The Mockery Bird (1981)

Bird , Dance

“The moon is a silver pin-head vast,
That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.”

William R. Alger (1822–1905) American clergyman and poet

"The Use of the Moon", p. 178.
Poetry of the Orient, 1865 edition

“On Saturday, the 24th January, 1680/2nd Muharram, the Emperor went to view lake Udaisagar, constructed by the Rana, and ordered all the three temples on its banks to be demolished.'…On the 29th January [1680]/7th Muharram, Hasan 'Ali Khan brought to the Emperor twenty camel-loads of tents and other things captured from the Rana's palace and reported that one hundred and seventy-two other temples in the environs of Udaipur had been destroyed. The Khan received the title of Bahadur 'Alamgirshahi'…'Abu Turab, who had been sent to demolish the temples of Amber, returned to Court on Tuesday, the 10th August [1680]/24th Rajab, and reported that he had pulled down sixty-six temples.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 107-120, also quoted in part in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers. (Different translation : Abu Tarab, who had been commissioned to effect the destruction of the idol temples in Amber, reported in person on the 24th Rajab, that threescore and six of these edifices had been levelled with the ground.)
Quotes from late medieval histories, 1680s

“Brethren, it is not the thinker who is the true king of men, as we sometimes hear it proudly said. We need one who will not only show, but be the Truth; who will not only point, but open and be the Way; who will not only communicate thought, but give, because He is the Life. Not the rabbi's pulpit, nor the teacher's desk, still less the gilded chairs of earthly monarchs, least of all the' tents of conquerors, are the throne of the true king. He rules from the cross.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 78.

Life , Men , Truth , Way

“My dear pastor, in my tent last night, after a fatiguing day's service, I remembered that I failed to send a contribution for our colored Sunday school. Enclosed you will find a check for that object, which please acknowledge at your earliest convenience and oblige yours faithfully.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Letter to his pastor after the First Battle of Bull Run (22 July 1861); as quoted in The Religious Development of the Negro in Virginia (1914) by Joseph Brummell Earnest, p. 84

School , Color , Night

“The greater the speed required of us in the digital world – and speed does matter, but never at the expense of accuracy or fairness or anything which would imperil trust – the more we should be honest about the tentative nature of what is possible.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Alan Rusbridger (2008) cited in: Stuart Allan (2010) News Culture. p. 2.
2000s

World , Nature , Speed

“If the GOP’s “big tent” is destined to collapse, there’s no one better to be standing under it than Kemp. If the party does not collapse-and it elites continue to ignore the views of its grass roots-it will be too left-wing for any true freedom lover to support.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Jack Kemp, American Socialist" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, September 1996, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1996sep-00001,

Lovers , Support , Freedom , Grass

“Bernier says that the Rajput “Rajas never mount (guard) within a (Mughal) fortress, but invariably without the walls, under their own tents… and always refusing to enter any fortress unless well attended, and by men determined to sacrifice their lives for their leaders. This self devotion has been sufficiently proved when attempts have been made to deal treacherously with a Raja.””

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

François Bernier, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Men

“Imagine an immense plain.... in the middle, a small Gothic chapel surrounded by trees.... around that a hundred tents made of white canvas.... in open-air kitchens huge pots of boiling soup, incredible ragouts..”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin in a letter to his brother, 1857; as cited in the descritption of 'The Pardon of Saint-Anne-La-Palud' by the Met-museum https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/744059]
Boudin described in his typical way the scene of the sacred procession of the Pardon of Saint-Anne-la-Palud, a major religious festival in Brittany, that he witnessed in 1857
1850s - 1870s

Imagination , Tree

“I have spent days and nights camped out in tents with fellow protesters; I have led demonstrations in the streets facing the threat of mortars, missiles and gunfire; I have struggled to build a movement for democratic change — all while caring for my three young children.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Yemen’s Unfinished Revolution, 2011

Children , Change , Night

“[Hollywood]: It's a nuthouse. The other day a man phoned and wanted me to endorse a certain brand of cigarettes. I had nothing against them and in fact will smoke them or anything else that comes along, but I didn't know why he was bothering me. I thought maybe if I was nice they'd give me a carton as a thank offering, so I rather tentatively broached the matter of remuneration. What was the endorsement worth, I asked, and he said three thousand dollars. What are you going to do in an atmosphere like that?”

Frances Farmer (1913–1970) American actress

Collier's magazine, (8 May 1937)

““Dame Fairy of the Silver Eyes: allow me to put you a question, which is this: where should I seek the Holy Grail?”
“Determine its location and go to that spot; that is my wise advice.”
Travante spoke tentatively: “If you could guide me to my lost youth, I would be most grateful.”
Twisk jumped high in the air, pirouetted, settled slowly to the ground. “I am not an index of the world’s worries. I know nothing either of Christian crockery nor truant time! And now: silence!”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 8, section 3 (p. 881)

Youth , World , Question , Silence

“Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh, and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 3

God , Winter , Weather

“I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part I “Snake’s Road”, Chapter 2 (p. 323)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Women , Men , God , Pleasure

“If there's a hole in a' your coats,
I rede you tent it;
A chield's aman you takin' notes,
And faith he'll prent it.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

On the Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland, st. 1 (1793)

Faith

“The Arab's tent… actually consists of two separate tents. The outer tent is white and acts as a heat-reflective layer. The lower-inner tent additionally protects… by providing a blanket of moving air between the two tent layers. …this tent system also illustrates the two, most basic principles of summer cooling: reflective insulation and ventilation. …One system must supplement and reinforce the other.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Summer

“At the ULB, Brout and I initiated a research group in fundamental interactions, that is, in the search for the general laws of nature. Joined by brilliant students, many of them becoming world renowned physicists, our group contributed to the many fields at the frontier of the challenges facing contemporary physics. While the mechanism discovered in 1964 was developed all over the world to encode the nature of weak interactions in a "Standard Model," our group contributed to the understanding of strong interactions and quark confinement, general relativity and cosmology. There we introduced the idea of a primordial exponential expansion of the universe, later called inflation, which we related to the origin of the universe itself, a scenario, which I still think may possibly be conceptually the correct one. During these developments, our group extended our contacts with other Belgian universities and got involved in many international collaborations.
With our group and many other collaborators I analysed fractal structures, supergravity, string theory, infinite Kac-Moody algebras and more generally all tentative approaches to what I consider as the most important problem in fundamental interactions: the solution to the conflict between the classical Einsteinian theory of gravitation, namely general relativity, and the framework of our present understanding of the world, quantum theory.”

François Englert (1932) Belgian theoretical physicist

excerpt[François Englert - Biographical, Nobel Prize in Physics (nobelprize.org), 2013, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/englert-bio.html]

World , Law , Search , Idea

“When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”

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

Spoken at a September 13, 2001 meeting with the four senators from New York and Virginia. Reported in "A President Finds His True Voice", Newsweek (September 24, 2001)
2000s, 2001

Decision

“How scientists go about their job: and it's a process, it's a question of asking questions, respecting observation, respecting experiment, having tentative explanations and then testing them…. There is a problem sometimes with how we teach science at schools. Because we sometimes teach it as if it has been chiseled in stone.”

Paul Nurse (1949) Nobel prize winning British biochemist

in Charlie Rose Science Series: The Imperative of Science http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9027 with Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bruce Alberts, Editor-In-Chief of Science and Lisa Randall of Harvard University.

School , Question , Problem , Science

“Any study of the population of the precensus times can be based only on estimates, and estimates by their very nature tend to be tentative.”

K. S. Lal book Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India

Preface (p. vi).
Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973)

Nature , Study , Time

“Temptations came to him, in middle age, tentatively and without insistence, like a neglected butcher-boy who asks for a Christmas box in February for no more hopeful reason than that he didn't get one in December.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"The Reticence of Lady Anne"
Reginald in Russia (1910)

Age , Hope , Boy , Christmas

“The most superficial fact regarding the Discourses, the fact that the number of its chapters equals the number of books of Livy's History, compelled us to start a chain of tentative reasoning which brings us suddenly face to face with the only New Testament quotation that ever appears in Machiavelli's two books and with an enormous blasphemy.”

Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli

Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 49

Books , History , Appearance

“It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience.”

Robert J. Birgeneau (1942) Canadian physicist

"Message to Campus Community" http://zungu.tumblr.com/post/12620438282/message-to-campus-community, November 10, 2011.

“She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" The Silken Tent http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-silken-tent/" (1942)
1940s

Guy , Summer

“the streams buck like rams in a tent
whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed
shadows of the shepherds.
black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees.
thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys.
wings brush against flowers.
fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Dada poetry lines from his poem 'Der Vogel Selbdritt', Jean / Hans Arp - first published in 1920; as quoted in Gesammelte Gedichte I (transl. Herbert Read), p. 41
1910-20s

Fools , Spring , Flowers , Tree

“They held us in San Antonio … We had tents and blankets but no arms. We had food. But every minute we expected to be taken out and shot. Nobody said it aloud. Geronimo had been promised that he would not die by bullets (by Usen, the Apache God), but the rest had not.”

Geronimo (1829–1909) leader of the Bedonkohe Apache

Jasper Kanseah, a fellow captive, as quoted in Geronimo and the End of the Apache Wars (1990), by Charles Leland Sonnichsen, p. 101.
About

God , Food

“Critic, relent!
Your hope for repentance
Will meet with disappointment.
For this is the life,
Not desert tents,
Not camel's milk!”

Abu Nuwas (762–814) Arabic poet

Diwan, 11–12.

Life , Hope , Disappointment

“If those gringos imagine for a moment they can take me back there and show me in a side tent at two bits a head they are very mistaken.<”

Pío Pico (1801–1894) Governor of Alta California

William David Estrada, Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and contested space (2008)
Columbian Exposition

Imagination

“Instruction, that mysterious communing of Wisdom with Ignorance, is no longer an indefinable tentative process, requiring a study of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual variation of means and methods, to attain the same end; but a secure, universal, straightforward business, to be conducted in the gross, by proper mechanism.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Wisdom , Communication , Business , Study

“My first night in camp, as I sat eating sardines out of a tin and watching my Somalis driving the camels up from the river to couch them by the tent, I knew that I would not have been anywhere else for all the money in the world. For a month I travelled in an arid, hostile land. I was alone; there was no one whom I could consult; if I met with trouble from the tribes I could get no help; if I were sick there was no one to doctor me. Men trusted me and obeyed my orders; I was responsible for their safety. I was often tired and thirsty, sometimes frightened and lonely, but I tasted freedom and a way of life from which there could be no recall.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 8.

Life , Men , Money , Hostility

“For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses.”

George E. P. Box (1919–2013) British statistician

Source: Science and Statistics (1976), p. 792

World , Reality

“Tell Hill he must come up … Strike the tent.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Reported as his last words. There are suggestions that Lee's biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman embellished Lee's final moments; as Lee suffered a stroke on September 28, 1870. Dying two weeks later, on October 12, 1870, shortly after 9 a.m. from the effects of pneumonia. Lee's stroke had resulted in aphasia, rendering him unable to speak. When interviewed the four attending physicians and family stated "he had not spoken since 28 September..."
Misattributed

“Here in the body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

At Home in Heaven.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Home

“We played a gig in the Swiss Alps at a snowboarding convention. Red Bull-this energy sports-fuel drink-sponsored the whole thing. It has some ingredient believed to be bull-testicle extract. We went way off our tour route, had to take two planes and missed a night's sleep. We got up there and there's no snow-it's all mud. You couldn't walk. You'd step and then be up to your knee in mud. So you had several thousand disgruntled snowboarders tanked up to the max on bull-testicle extract. Of course, for some reason, these strapping brutes were made to wait out in the mid and the rain before coming into the tent for the show. When we get up to play, I see this forty-foot gap between us and the audience-they still managed to nail us with empty cans of Red Bull. After a few songs, I wasn't really playing my guitar, I was using it to bay cans back into the crowd of disgruntled sports enthusiasts. It felt like we were A Flock of Seagulls opening for Napalm Death.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Rolling Stone magazine, 1996

Death , Way , Drink , Sport

“Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good."”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.
Bongo in Childhood Is Hell (1988)

Love , Lie , Making love , Dogs

“As I thought about this, I noted that the bacterium is just a physical system; it's just a bunch of molecules that hang together and do things to one another. So, I wondered, what characteristics are necessary for a physical system to be an autonomous agent? After thinking about this for a number of months I came up with a tentative definition.
My definition is that an autonomous agent is something that can both reproduce itself and do at least one thermodynamic work cycle. It turns out that this is true of all free-living cells, excepting weird special cases. They all do work cycles, just like the bacterium spinning its flagellum as it swims up the glucose gradient. The cells in your body are busy doing work cycles all the time.”

Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

The Adjacent Possible: A Talk with Stuart Kauffman, 2003

Business , Thinking , Time

“It's yet another mark of Auden's superiority that whereas his contemporaries could be didactic about what they had merely thought or read, Auden could be tentative about what he felt in his bones.”

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

'On Auden's Death'
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Reading

“Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Death

“Perspective and Impressionism were tentative attempts to deal with the world of appearance because of a fear to look inside. Cubism is structure and order. Now both epidermis and order are no longer possible.... The accidental aspects of Impressionist composition are to be understood as a reaction. And the reaction of Cézanne is to be seen as a response to Impressionism. One cannot simply disregard Impressionism. As a dialectic antithesis it was important. The Impressionists had the idea of dissolution; they wanted to represent light, not bodies and not shadows, but light for itself. Frequently I find this tedious, but there is an idea behind it: Atomization is a modern idea..”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

World , Fear , Idea , Light

“In our online descriptions and program literature we describe the cloisters as a public sphere for networked interaction, the gathering place for students, professors, and librarians engaged in planning, evaluating, or reviewing the efforts of research and study utilizing the whole range of technologies of literacy. We go further and describe the task of the cloisters as to "channel flows of research, learning and teaching between the increasingly networked world of the library and the intimacy and engagement of our classrooms and other campus spaces". There we continue to explore the "collectible object", which I tentatively described in Othermindedness in terms of maintaining an archive of "the successive choices, the errors and losses, of our own human community" and suggesting that what constitutes the collectible object is the value which suffuses our choices. It seemed to me then that electronic media are especially suited to tracking such "changing change".
I think it still seems so to me now but I do fear we have lost track of the beauty and nimbleness of new media in representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian, the ordinary mindfulness which makes human life possible and valuable.
It is interesting, I think, that recounting and rehearsing this notion leaves this interview layered and speckled with (self) quotations, documentations, implicit genealogies, images, and traditions of continuity, change, and difference. Perhaps the most quoted line of afternoon over the years has been the sentence "There is no simple way to say this."”

Michael Joyce (1945) American academic and writer

The same is true of any attempt to describe the way in which the collectible object participates in (I use this word as a felicitous shorthand for the complex of ideas involved in what I called "representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian" above) the library as living archive.
An interview with Michael Joyce and review of Liam’s Going at Trace Online Writing Centre Archive (2 December 2002) http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/review/index.cfm?article=33

Life , World , Fear , Beauty

“I don't feel like I want to get in front of a camera any more. I like getting, you know, just being a slob behind a camera and watching other people look good. You know, I might not hurry back. I might go and go somewhere no-one can find me. You know where that is? You know where the place is no-one can find you? I was thinking of pitching my tent right next to the weapons of mass destruction. Then no-one would find me.”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

Primetime interview with Diane Sawyer, February 2004. http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2004_02_22/story_1034.asp

People , Feeling , Thinking

“Theoretical psychology in its present state must try to develop a system of concepts which shows all the characteristics of a Gestalt, in which any part depends upon every other part. As we do not yet have the knowledge of facts which really suffices to determine this system of concepts and as, on the other hand, this knowledge of "facts" cannot be acquired without developing this system of concepts, there seems to be only one way open: to proceed slowly by tentative steps, to make decisions rather reluctantly, to keep in view always the whole field of psychology, and to stay in closest contact with the actual work of psychological research.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. viii.

Way , Knowledge , Decision , Parting

“Lying in my tent
I can hear your cry
Echoing round the mountainside
You sound lonely”

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

Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)

Lying , Cry

“GAVRAS: Well, he’s bigger than a pop star. I mean, when he came to Paris in 2007, he was supposed to stay at the Hôtel de Marigny, which is the best hotel. But Gaddafi came with a tent. It was this huge flagged tent—just him and his army guards, who were all girls. They were in these crazy leopard outfits. I mean, Gaddafi is way better dressed than any pop star in the world.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

World , Way , Girl , Star

“In all climes we pitch out tents,
Cronies of the elements,
With the secret lords of birth
Intimate and free.”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

The Wander-lovers.

Secret , Birth

“Never work for a company that says people are its most important asset. If you wanted to get a mortgage and you said that your only asset was people you would end up living in a tent.”

Guy Browning (1964) British comedian

People, Office Politics (2006).

People

“I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents:
A honeymoon delight,
A joy of love at sight,
That ages in an hour
My song be like a flower!”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Bk. II, No. 13, I Have Loved Flowers That Fade http://www.poetry-online.org/bridges_i_have_loved_flowers_that_fade.htm, st. 1 (1879).
Shorter Poems (1879-1893)

Love , Marriage , Age , Flowers

“One of the crucial yardsticks by which we shall have to judge the results of the new abortion law combined with the voluntary sterilisation law will be whether it tends to raise or lower the total quality of our population. We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two. Intelligent application of these laws can help reduce the distortion that has already set in. Until the less educated themselves are convinced and realise that they should concentrate their limited resources on one or two to give their children the maximum chance to climb up the educational ladder, their children will always be at the bottom of the economic scale. It is unlikely that the results will be discernible before five years. Nor will the effect be felt before fifteen to twenty years. But we will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Abortion Bill (As reported from Select Committee), 29 Dec 1969. Singapore Parliament Reports http://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/topic.jsp?currentTopicID=00054060-ZZ&currentPubID=00069213-ZZ&topicKey=00069213-ZZ.00054060-ZZ_1%2Bid015_19691229_S0003_T00031-bill%2B
1960s

Children , Education , Law , Intelligence

“"It is of course a magic carpet."
Abdullah had heard that one before. He bowed over his tucked-up hands. "Many and various are the virtues said to reside in carpets," he agreed. "Which one does the poet of the sands claim for this? Does it welcome a man home to his tent? Does it bring peace to the hearth? Or maybe," he said, poking the frayed edge suggestively with one toe, "it is said to never wear out?"”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), pp. 16-17.

Peace , Home

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

Preface to the Second Edition [Tr. F. Max Müller], (New York, 1900), p. 690; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14022383M/Memorabilia_mathematica, Published 1914. p. 10
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

People , Hope , Way , History

“The Gran Sasso results could be seen as tentatively offering support for the big bang theory – if we could find a way to test that they are indeed travelling backwards in time.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Neutrino misbehaviour suggested 50 years ago

Way , Travel , Support , Time

“Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong. Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love , Life , God , Age

“As for myself, I confess to a preference for clear-cut situations, for radical and even extreme positions. But I also feel a secret and very strong attraction to ambiguous situations… for example, that hovering moment when it is no longer day and not yet night, the shades of emotion between indifference and friendship… (they) are so fascinating because they are so indefinable. That which is pure transition, is all the more appealing to the mind because of its elusiveness. It is the same in the cases of Mondrian, Kandinsky and the Cubists: abstraction and figuration have a common frontier in their work that is so tenuous that we often do not know which side we are on. It is this ambiguity that imports a rare poetic charm to their paintings. Artists like Klee, Miro and Dubuffet have also pitched their tents on this borderline and constantly travel from one side tot the other.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), pp. 43/44: (1962)

Friendship , Secret , Travel , Feeling

“[Henry] James’s repressions and evasions are many, varied and exhausting. Why more people are not seen rushing shrieking from libraries, shredding James novels in their hands, I cannot say. I used to wonder whether enthusiasm for him was based on identification, since his passive, tentative heroes resemble many academics. Perhaps what is intolerable is his enshrinement in a soporific criticism. So much must be overlooked to crown him with laurel.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 622

People

“I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason: Because God said so. As I said a minute ago, look it up in the Book of Genesis. It is right up there on the desk.In Genesis 13:14–17, the Bible says, "The Lord said to Abraham, 'Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward, and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever.... Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it to thee.'" That is God talking.The Bible says that Abraham removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar before the Lord. Hebron is in the West Bank. It is at this place where God appeared to Abram and said, "I am giving you this land — the West Bank."”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.
" Peace in the Middle East http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/peace.htm", Senate Floor speech regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict ()

God , Books , Support , Appearance

“There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants…. The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken.”

Jack London book John Barleycorn

Source: John Barleycorn (1913), Ch. II

Stupidity , Imagination , Nature

“Snatch them baldheaded, slap their teeth out. Little starved faces four feet from the screen, you’d speak to them in a loud, commanding voice, get not even a twitch. Use of the preemptive splint, not everyone knows about it. The world reminds us of its power, again and again and again. Going along minding your own business, and suddenly an act of God, right there in front of you. Great falls of snow and bursting birds. Getting guilty, letting it all slide. Sown here and there like little…petunias, one planted in Old Lyme, one in Fairbanks, one in Tempe. Alleged that he slept with her while she was asleep, I can see it, under certain circumstances. You may wink, but not at another person. You may wink only at pigeons. You may pound in your tent pegs, pitch your tent, gather wood for the fire, form the hush puppies. They seek to return? Back to the nest? The warm arms? The ineffable smells? Not on your tintype. Well, I think that’s a little harsh. Think that’s a little harsh do you? Yes, harsh. Harsh. Well that’s a sketch, that is, that’s a tin-plated sketch— They write and telephone. Short of cash? Give us a call, all inquiries handled with the utmost confidentiality. They call constantly, they’re calling still, saying williwaw, williwaw”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

God , World , Business , Bird

“By marrying experiment to speculation, we put ourselves in a dimmer version of the circumstance of the Creator. We remake nature or we imagine it remade. By this expedient we free ourselves, if only partly and tentatively, from suspicion of our beliefs, and we live once again, unafraid, in the light of the actual.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 80

Imagination , Nature , Light

“How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! … In such places standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make — leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents, or piled stone — we all dwell in a house of one room — the world with the firmament for its roof — and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

18 July 1890, page 321
John of the Mountains, 1938

Men , World , Mountain , Bird

“It should be clear by now that there are people who can, in fact, be reasonably considered experts; that it is rational to rely, within limits, on ex pert opinion; and that it is possible, by exercising relatively simple criteria, to gain insight into whether a particular expert is reliable or not. It is also true that experts, of course, do make mistakes, and that even the agreement of a large majority of experts in a field does not guarantee that they got it right. That’s the nature of scientific truth, as we have seen throughout this book: it is tentative, because it is the result of a human endeavor that is limited both by the type and amount of available evidence and by humans’ finite mental powers and emotional reactions. But the examples above show how you can, with a little bit of practice, tell science from bunk!”

Massimo Pigliucci (1964) chair of the Department of Philosophy at CUNY-Lehman College

Nonsense on Stilts (2010), Ch. 12 : Who's Your Expert?

People , Truth , Books , Exercises

“Old institutions have shattered, but new ones have not yet emerged. The twenty-first century will be a period in which a range of new institutions, moral systems, and practices will begin their first tentative emergence. The first half of the twenty-first century will be marked by intense social conflict globally. All of this frames the international struggles of the twenty-first century.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 64

“A car coughed, starting. Morning softly
Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair
From underseas, kindled the looking-glass,
Distinguished the dresser and the white wall.
The bird called tentatively, whistled, called,
Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet
With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so,
O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail
Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning
Again and again,
while history is unforgiven.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"In the Naked Bed, in Plato's Cave" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-naked-bed-in-plato-s-cave/
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Cars , History , Bird , Sleep

“At the present time we are the sixth air Power in the world. But every State is rapidly expanding its air force. They are all expanding, but much more rapidly than we are doing. It is certain, therefore, that.. in 1936…we shall have fallen further behind other countries than we are now in air defence. … If you extend your view over the [Government's] five-years' programme I believe it is also true to state that, having regard to the increases which are being made by other countries and which are projected, even if the whole programme is carried out, at the end of the period…we shall be worse off in 1939 relatively—it is relativity that counts in these matters—than we are now. … Yet even for this tiny, timid, tentative, tardy increase of the Air Force, to which the Government have at length made up their mind, they are to be censured by the whole united forces of the Socialist and Liberal parties here and throughout the country.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1934/jul/30/armaments#column_2366 in the House of Commons (30 July 1934) on Labour's motion of censure against the Government for rearming
The 1930s

World , Time , Country