Quotes about terminal

A collection of quotes on the topic of terminal, termination, doing, life.

Quotes about terminal

John Cleese photo

“Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Source: Life and How to Survive It

Chris Cornell photo

“If you knew someone who was terminally ill and in grave pain, would you participate in an assisted suicide? I would.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell official Twitter, April 18, 2009, http://archive.is/kqUNK, no https://twitter.com/chriscornell/status/1552596343,
Chris Cornell official Twitter, April 18, 2009, http://archive.is/3yjSP, no https://twitter.com/chriscornell/status/1553316027,
On depression and suicide

Galileo Galilei photo

“This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Salviati, Day Four, 278-279 Stillman Drake translation (1974)
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Context: The speed of the ball—thanks to opposition from the air—will not go on increasing forever. Rather, what will happen is seen in bodies of very little weight falling through no great distance; I mean, a reduction to equable motion, which will occur also in a lead or iron ball after the descent of some thousands of braccia. This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air...

Cassandra Clare photo
William Shakespeare photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“The most distinguishing feature, or, at least, one of the most distinguishing features, of the great change effected in 1832 was that those who effected it at once abolished all the franchises as ancient as those of the Baronage of England; and, while they abolished them, they offered and proposed no substitute. The discontent upon the subject of representation which afterwards more or less pervaded our society dates from that period, and that discontent, all will admit, has ceased. It was terminated by the Act of Parliamentary Reform of 1867-8. That act was founded on a confidence that the great body of the people of this country were "Conservative". I use the word in its purest and loftiest sense. I mean that the people of England, and especially the working classes of England, are proud of belonging to a great country, and wish to maintain its greatness— that they are proud of belonging to an Imperial country, and are resolved to maintain, if they can, the empire of England— that they believe, on the whole, that the greatness and the empire of England are to be attributed to the ancient institutions of this country… There are people who may be, or who at least affect to be, working men, and who, no doubt, have a certain influence with a certain portion of the metropolitan working class, who talk Jacobinism… I say with confidence that the great body of the working class of England utterly repudiate such sentiments. They have no sympathy with them. They are English to the core. They repudiate cosmopolitan principles. They adhere to national principles. They are for maintaining the greatness of the kingdom and the empire, and they are proud of being subjects of our Sovereign and members of such an Empire. Well, then, as regards the political institutions of this country, the maintenance of which is one of the chief tenets of the Tory party, so far as I can read public opinion, the feeling of the nation is in accordance with the Tory party.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech at banquet of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations, Crystal Palace, London (24 June 1872), cited in "Mr. Disraeli at Sydenham," The Times (25 June 1872), p. 8.
1870s

Jim Butcher photo
Henri Barbusse photo
W. H. Auden photo

“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

"Hell"
A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

Sean Connery photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo
Nikola Tesla photo

“Much has been said about Yugoslavia and its people, but many Americans may be under a wrong impression for political enemies and agitators have spread the idea that its inhabitants belong to different nations animated by mutual hate and held together against their will, by a tyrannical power. The fact is that all Yugoslavs — Serbians, Slavonians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Dalmations, Montenagrins, Croatians and Slovenes — are of the same race, speak the same language and have common national ideals and traditions.
At the termination of the World War, Alexander brought about a political union creating a powerful and resourceful State. This was hailed with joy by all the Slavs of the Balkans, but it took time before the people found themselves in the new conditions.
I was born in Croatia. The Croatians and Slovenes were never in a position to fight for their independence. It was the Serbians who fought the battles for freedom and the price of liberty was paid in Serbian blood. All true Croatians and Slovenes remember that gratefully. They also know that the Serbians have an unequaled aptitude and experience in warfare and are best qualified to direct the forces of the country in a crisis.
Ever since united Yugoslavia came into being through Alexander's efforts, political enemies have done all they could to disrupt it by sowing seeds of discord and disseminating malicious reports. … The death of the King has shaken the country to its very foundations, but the enemies who say that it means the disruption of Yugoslavia will hope in vain, for the noble blood of the great man has only served to cement its parts more firmly and strengthen the national structure. Alexander will live long in the memory of his people, a heroic figure of imposing stature, both the Washington and Lincoln of the Yugoslavs; like Washington an able and intrepid general who freed his country from oppression; like Lincoln a wise and patriotic leader who suffered martyrdom.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Tribute to King Alexander, to the editor of The New York Times (19 October 1934), also at Heroes of Serbia http://www.heroesofserbia.com/2012/10/tribute-to-king-alexander-by-nikola.html

Nikola Tesla photo

“While I have not, as yet, actually effected a transmission of a considerable amount of energy, such as would be of industrial importance, to a great distance by this new method, I have operated several model plants under exactly the same conditions which will exist in a large plant of this kind, and the practicability of the system is thoroughly demonstrated. The experiments have shown conclusively that, with two terminals maintained at an elevation of not more than thirty thousand to thirty-five thousand feet above sea-level, and with an electrical pressure of fifteen to twenty million volts, the energy of thousands of horse-power can be transmitted over distances which may be hundreds and, if necessary, thousands of miles. I am hopeful, however, that I may be able to reduce very considerably the elevation of the terminals now required, and with this object I am following up an idea which promises such a realization. There is, of course, a popular prejudice against using an electrical pressure of millions of volts, which may cause sparks to fly at distances of hundreds of feet, but, paradoxical as it may seem, the system, as I have described it in a technical publication, offers greater personal safety than most of the ordinary distribution circuits now used in the cities. This is, in a measure, borne out by the fact that, although I have carried on such experiments for a number of years, no injury has been sustained either by me or any of my assistants.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

John Irving photo

“In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

Source: The World According to Garp, ch. 19

Chris Crutcher photo

“Beware the short terminal guy with nothing to lose.”

Source: Deadline

Noam Chomsky photo
Lev Grossman photo
Nora Roberts photo

“A kiss isn't terminal."
"It is the way you do it.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Genuine Lies

Steven Wright photo
Sherman Alexie photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood”

Jace to Clary, pg. 232
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Hunter S. Thompson photo
Gloria Allred photo

“In 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. In the sweep of a pen, the Supreme Court promised all American women that there would never again be another Jane Roe, beginning distant courts for the basic human right to decide for herself whether to terminate a pernancy. Never again, the Court promised, may the State presume to intrude on a decision so intimate and significant that it may well determine the remainder of a young woman's life.”

Gloria Allred (1941) American civil rights lawyer

Gloria Allred. 1990 Gloria Allred testimony before United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Publication Title: Hearings on the Nomination of David H. Souter to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, September 13, 14, 17, 18, and 19, 1990. Category: Congressional Committee Materials. Collection: Additional Government Publications. Publication name: Supreme Court Nomination Hearings. Date issued: September 13, 1990. Congress. 101st Congress, 2nd Session. www.gpo.gov http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER/pdf/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER-5-2-1.pdf, more info at S. Hrg. 101-1263 at www.gpo.gov http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER-2-4-1-5-3

David Dixon Porter photo
Mike Huckabee photo

“Here's the clear "science:"When the male sperm and female egg join, a new and unique life form is created. At conception. Not at birth or viability, or when a lawyer says so. At conception this happens. John McCain got it right; Obama pled less scientific knowledge than a 5th grader.This life is either human or something else. Science irrefutably would declare that the life which is starting from that moment is human. It's not a stalk of broccoli, it's not a parrot, squirrel, or dolphin. It will never become a tree—it can only become a human. It has the entire DNA schedule that it will have for the rest of its life right then. In days it will begin to take on increasingly observable human characteristics and form, but at conception, it is biologically human.If this life is human, then the only issue left is whether this human life falls under the notion that it has a fundamental right of existence or not. If not, it is because we as a culture have decided that some human lives are simply not worth living. If we can decide that about an innocent and unborn baby, we can also decide it on the basis of less absolute criteria than that. If we make that choice (and this is all about "CHOICE," isn’t it?) then someone may decide that a terminally ill person is not a life worth living. Maybe a severely disabled child is a life not worth living; what about a person with a limited IQ? Say that's absurd—that an educated and enlightened society would never be so audacious as to begin to terminate life based on such arbitrary excuses? Maybe you haven't studied Nazi Germany, in which the murder of six million Jews was justified because of their religion and millions of others were murdered because of their politics. Germany was not a primitive, superstitious culture. It was one filled with the intelligentsia and enlightened.This is an important issue. It's why we can't trust Obama with America's future because he's not even sure which Americans are worth saving and which ones aren't. And it's why that for many of us, McCain's selection of a running mate really does matter. Because John McCain clearly is pro life, I will support and vote for him because Obama is not an option for me as a pro life person. I will be disappointed if McCain doesn't pick a true pro life person and realize that should that happen, he will lose many of the very people who supported me. I cannot expect all of you to vote for McCain if he chooses someone whose record isn't pro life. It will be a less than perfect decision for all of us—our only real choices are McCain and Obama; one will protect life and one won't. Some will argue for a 3rd party candidate and I respect that, but in political realities, that is essentially a vote for Obama and I can't go there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

A Message from the Governor
HuckPAC
2008-08-23
http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=1848&CommentPage=5
2011-03-01

Paul Krugman photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo
Francis Escudero photo
Anthony Kennedy photo
Erich Fromm photo

“Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

"Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem" in On Disobedience and Other Essays (1981)

Johannes Grenzfurthner photo

“Contemporary art -- the field we are usually working in because there's money -- is mostly concerned with systems or systematic concepts. In the context of their work, artists adapt models of individual art-specific or economic or political systems like in a laboratory, to reveal the true nature of these systems by deconstructing them. So would it be fair to say that by their chameleon-like adaptation they are attempting to generate a similar system? Well… the corporate change in the art market has aged somewhat in the meantime and looks almost as old as the 'New Economy'. Now even the last snotty brat has realized that all the hogwash about the creative industries, sponsoring, fund-raising, the whole load of bullshit about the beautiful new art enterprises, was not much more than the awful veneer on the stupid, crass fanfare of neo-liberal liberation teleology. What is the truth behind the shifting spheres of activity between computer graphics, web design and the rest of all those frequency-orientated nerd pursuits? A lonely business with other lonely people at their terminals. And in the meantime the other part of the corporate identity has incidentally wasted whole countries like Argentina or Iceland. That's the real truth of the matter.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Interview on Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-johannes-grenzfurthner-monochrom-part-1

Hunter S. Thompson photo
Otto Weininger photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“I play the Terminator, but you guys are the true terminators.”

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

To American soldiers stationed in Iraq (2003), as quoted in Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,91110,00.html (2003).
2000s

Jack Thompson (attorney) photo

“This is not rocket science. When a kid who has never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he's a video gamer.”

Jack Thompson (attorney) (1951) American activist and disbarred attorney

[2007-04-20, Were video games to blame for massacre?, Winda Benedetti, MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18220228/, 2014-11-18]

Margaret Thatcher photo
Anna Soubry photo
Ray Kurzweil photo

“The Terminator' is not an impossibility. I think that symbolizes the downside of artificial intelligence … but technology has a big downside in general. There is a bigger downside to not pursuing it.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Futurist Ray Kurweil Bring Dead Father Back to Life http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/futurist-ray-kurzweil-bring-dead-father-back-life/story?id=14267712 (2011)

Harry Truman photo

“The Committee shall continue to exist until such time as the President shall terminate its existence by Executive order.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Executive Order 9981 (1948)

William Morley Punshon photo
Don DeLillo photo
William Morley Punshon photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“In my message last year I emphasized the necessity for further legislation with a view to expediting the consolidation of our rail ways into larger systems. The principle of Government control of rates and profits, now thoroughly embedded in our governmental attitude toward natural monopolies such as the railways, at once eliminates the need of competition by small units as a method of rate adjustment. Competition must be preserved as a stimulus to service, but this will exist and can be increased tinder enlarged systems. Consequently the consolidation of the railways into larger units for the purpose of securing the substantial values to the public which will come from larger operation has been the logical conclusion of Congress in its previous enactments, and is also supported by the best opinion in the country. Such consolidation will assure not only a greater element of competition as to service, but it will afford economy in operation, greater stability in railway earnings, and more economical financing. It opens large possibilities of better equalization of rates between different classes of traffic so as to relieve undue burdens upon agricultural products and raw materials generally, which are now not possible without ruin to small units owing to the lack of diversity of traffic. It would also tend to equalize earnings in such fashion as to reduce the importance of section 15A, at which criticism, often misapplied, has been directed. A smaller number of units would offer less difficulties in labor adjustments and would contribute much to the, solution of terminal difficulties.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

John Green photo
Gerald Ford photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

"H.L. Mencken," The Washington Post (14 September 1980); reprinted in A View from the Stands (1986)

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
P. V. Narasimha Rao photo
Bill Engvall photo
Gerald Ford photo
Virgil Miller Newton photo

“Drug-use is a terminal disease.”

Virgil Miller Newton (1938) American priest

Miller Newton (1981). Gone Way Down: Teenage Drug-Use is a Disease, American Studies Press, Tampa, FL, pg 62.
On Teenage Drug Use

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Ravi Gomatam photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Sigmund Freud photo
William H. Rehnquist photo

“A public library does not acquire Internet terminals in order to create a public forum for Web publishers to express themselves, any more than it collects books in order to provide a public forum for the authors of books to speak.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003) (plurality opinion); the case concerned whether Congress could require libraries receiving Federal subsidies for Internet connectivity to install filtering software.
Judicial opinions

John Flavel photo

“Christ bounds and terminates the vast desires of the soul; He is the very Sabbath of the soul.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 559.

Eric R. Kandel photo
Neil Gaiman photo

“I have always felt,” he said, “that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final sanctuary of the terminally inept.”

Source: Neverwhere (1996), Chapter 10; Gaiman here references the famous statement of Isaac Asimov from "Foundation", Astounding Science-Fiction (May 1942)

Robert Harris photo
Robin Morgan photo
George Gordon Byron photo

“She was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all.”

Stanza 2; this can be compared to: "She floats upon the river of his thoughts", Henry W. Longfellow, The Spanish Student, act ii, scene 3.
The Dream (1816)

Nat Hentoff photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“What the world did not deem possible the German people have achieved…. It is already war history how the German Armies defeated the legions of capitalism and plutocracy. After forty-five days this campaign in the West was equally and emphatically terminated.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

“Adolf Hitler’s Order of the Day Calling for Invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece,” Berlin, (April 6, 1941), New York Times, April 7, 1941
1940s

John F. Kennedy photo

“I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession. You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.
We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating."
But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.
If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man.”

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

1961, Address to ANPA

David Lange photo

“Death is very, very terminal.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

In a speech raising awareness about the AIDS epidemic.
Source: National Business Review, 1 May 1987, p. 10.

Norbert Wiener photo
Potter Stewart photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“It is already war history how the German Armies defeated the legions of capitalism and plutocracy. After forty-five days this campaign in the West was equally and emphatically terminated.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Berlin: Hitler’s Order of the Day Calling for Invasion of Yugoslovia and Greece http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-order-of-the-day-calling-for-invasion-of-yugoslovia-and-greece-april-1941 (April 6, 1941)
1940s

Douglas Adams photo
Robert Olmstead photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
David Lin photo

“I can guarantee they (Gambia) had had no contacts with (People's Republic of) China. We have cross-checked with various sources and were sure that the case had nothing to do with (People's Republic of) China. (People's Republic of) China has had no role in the case (Gambia's termination of diplomatic relations with ROC) so far.”

David Lin (1950) Taiwanese politician

David Lin (2013) cited in " Taiwan declares ties with the Gambia ‘terminated’ http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/11/19/2003577196/2" on Taipei Times, 19 November 2013

Charles Lyell photo
Derek Humphry photo
George William Curtis photo
Helen Hayes photo
Charles Lyell photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Charles Lyell photo
Alfred de Zayas photo

“To the extent that bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements lead to violations of human rights, they should be modified or terminated”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on the adverse impacts of free trade and investment agreements on a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN General Assembly

Michel Foucault photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Camille Paglia photo
Ron White photo