Quotes about testing
page 13

“Several years ago, the United States started accusing Russia of violating the INF Treaty, without providing any evidence. We basically had to pry the information from the US, information that would help us understand… what they meant. The US eventually mentioned the 9M729 missile, claiming that it had been tested on certain days at a certain testing site, and that the range violated the treaty’s provisions. Our data concerning these tests showed the opposite. The missile’s range is allowed under the treaty.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

News conference following the 25th OSCE Ministerial Council, Milan, Italy (7 December 2018)

Help, Understanding

“It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Hope, Failure, Success

“Khadaji only nodded. It didn’t matter to him if he passed the test or not. He wasn’t here to get a degree; he was here to learn.”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 14 (p. 122)

Learning

“We leave the question whether a man shall be a brain or hand worker entirely to him to settle. At the end of the term of three years as a common laborer, which every man must serve, it is for him to choose, in accordance to his natural tastes, whether he will fit himself for an art or profession, or be a farmer or mechanic. If he feels that he can do better work with his brains than his muscles, he finds every facility provided for testing the reality of his supposed bent, of cultivating it, and if fit of pursuing it as his avocation. The schools of technology, of medicine, of art, of music, of histrionics, and of higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without condition.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 7.

School, Question, Learning, Nature

“In October, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a DNA test that showed she is as little as 1/1,024 Native American in an attempt to prove that she has Native American ancestry. Now, she is apologizing to the Cherokee Nation for having done so.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

“It’s funny about career choices. I had to fight to test for the Janet Leigh role in Walking My Baby Back Home. Janet couldn’t dance at the time and I could—but she was a bigger name. I also fought to get the role Piper Laurie had in Son of Ali Baba. Luckily, I lost that one. The one I didn’t want to do was Revenge of the Creature.”

Lori Nelson (1933) Actress, model

Science-Fiction was considered bottom of the barrel in those days. Of course, that’s the picture I am most remembered for. It’s very ironic! Interview with Lori Nelson http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/lorinelson_interview.shtml

Home, Baby, Time, Revenge

“Behind all the Great-Society-style housing/anti-poverty/education programs lurked all the old stereotypes: blacks as animalistic, criminal, sexual, violent, and above all, as time went on, as pathological. The white power structures are always diagnosing the dysfunctions and prescribing a cure for the black family: high-rise housing projects, compulsory education and standardized testing, wars on poverty or drugs, self-esteem seminars. A good portion of the African-American population was simply institutionalized or interned, in public housing complexes, in urban schools, and in one of the biggest prison systems the world has ever known. It all amounts to a sprawling race gulag in which people are both dependent and hedged about with restrictions.”

Crispin Sartwell (1958) American philosopher

White Liberals: We’re Not Racist (August 29, 2016)

School, Family, Time, Housing

“He’s very elegant, he commits few fouls because he’s always first to every ball and this is an important gift. He’s also fast and has good technique and these are important skills for a defender. Italian football puts players to the test and he immediately showed he was up to the task and ready to play for Milan, at the San Siro. Playing with the kind of continuity he had this season proves he really belongs to the elite.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Franco Baresi, 2011 https://www.acmilan.com/en/news/show/134347 From former and current footballers

Football, Season

“Then the next morning Captain Moffet, my English teacher, gave me the test. I got such a headache, just trying to think carefully so I wouldn’t make any mistakes, that my test score dropped to 96. I couldn’t breathe. This meant that I was mentally slow, that I’d been lucky to even get into high school. My eyes filled with tears. I didn’t know what to do. I asked Captain Moffet if my parents needed to know this. I felt so ashamed. I should’ve been the one to die, not my brother, Joseph. He’d been smart, just like my little sister Linda, who at six years old could read better than me.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

School, Reading, Making love, Teachers

“I think the writing was in the wall. I could feel it was coming. It think he could have played the Nagpur Test but injury might have expedited his decision. Anyways, India is proud of you and I wish you happy retirement but I think although he has retired from International cricket, he has lots to offer in other aspects of the game.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

Bishan Singh Bedi.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

Game, Thinking, Feeling, Decision

“Her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy. After months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore and had to stop taking it. I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room all night in excruciating pain. … Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Pain, Birth, Night, Learning

“About the drug-testing policy.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

“Women are not allowed to be seen to enjoy themselves on lots of ways. They have a test for that in Ireland now, they’ve scientifically perfected that. The Madonna-Whore-Quotient of a woman. You know, if when a woman puts her hand together to pray, and when she’s crying the blood and she levitates and you don’t get a sustained hum in A Flat, she’s a fucking whore!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

What It Is (2009)

Whore, Perfection, Cry, Way

“We are… bound to attach the greatest importance to the preliminary step taken by Lavoisier, who is even more justly called the father of modern chemistry than Kepler is called the father of modern astronomy. The exact claims of Lavoisier to this important place in the history of chemistry have been variously stated: …since his time, and greatly through his labours, the quantitative method has been established as the ultimate test of chemical facts; the principle of this method being the rule that in all changes of combination and reaction, the total weight of the various ingredients—be they elementary bodies or compounds—remains unchanged. The science of chemistry was thus established upon an exact, a mathematical basis. By means of this method Lavoisier, utilising and analysing the results gained by himself and others before him, notably those of Priestley, Cavendish, and Black, succeeded in destroying the older theory of combustion, the so-called phlogistic theory.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=xqwQAAAAYAAJ (1903)

Time, History, Mathematics, Science

“Ki tests are not founded on the idea of testing for strength or weakness. The most important factor in ki testing is to accurately inform the person of the state of his or her mind. Thus, the person performing ki tests must truly understand and exhibit oneness of mind and body from the outset and then perform the tests correctly.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

22 : The treasure of ki testing
Ki Sayings (2003)

Idea, Understanding, Personality

“Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4

Self-confidence, Drawing, Effort, Exercises

“Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion. Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

School, Family, Question, Children

“If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Money, Family, School, Home

“All types of conniving methods are still being used to keep Negroes from becoming registered voters. Complex literacy tests are often given, with questions that a Ph. D. in any field or a person with a law degree from any great law university in the world could not answer to the even more difficult question of, how many bubbles do you find on a bar of soap? They tell me that occasionally they will ask that question in Mississippi and Alabama. And there are still millions of Negroes who are not registered to vote because of these methods being used.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Law, Question, Personality, Universe

“An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man. Misconnection of ideas is the same as misjudging, and has no positive existence, being merely a creature of the imagination; but nature and truth are real and uniform; and the rational mind by reasoning, discerns the uniformity, and is thereby enabled to make a just composition of ideas, which will stand the test of truth. But the fantastical illuminations of the credulous and superstitious part of mankind, proceed from weakness, and as far as they take place in the world subvert the religion of REASON, NATURE and TRUTH.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. XIII Section II - Of The Importance of the Exercise of Reason, and Practice of Morality, in order to the Happiness of Mankind

Imagination, Religion, Error, Nature

“Even high security prisoners like Charles Manson are testing positive in prison for illicit drugs… Our laws are not deterring many people from a life of drug abuse and drug trafficking, and if we cannot even keep these drug out of our prisons, how can we expect to keep them out of our communities?”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 49

Life, People, Law, Communication

“If humans turn out to be near the Kondrashov limit —that is, if on average every gamete has one bad mutation created during the lifetime of its producer— it is obviously not going to be nearly enough to test a baby for the subset of the few hundreds or so of well-characterized genetic defects”

W. D. Hamilton (1936–2000) British evolutionary biologist (1936-2000)

"The Hospitals Are Coming", in Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2: Evolution of Sex (2002)

Baby, Bad luck

“War is not only a contest of strength, but also a test of morality and ethics.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

With the century, vol. 3

War

“But as of right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test — That's the important thing. And the tests are all perfect. Like, the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”

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

Comparing coronavirus tests to his Ukraine phone call that led to his impeachment
during tour of Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, , quoted in * 2020-03-06
Trump Says Coronavirus Testing Is as ‘Perfect’ as His Ukraine Call
Chas Danner
New York
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/trump-coronavirus-testing-as-perfect-as-ukraine-call.html
2020s, 2020, March

Perfection

“Literary works do not take as their subjects characters and events which have impressed a writer primarily by the frequency of their appearance. For example, how many Jewish men, as we know them, have come nearly to the brink of plunging a knife into their only son because they believed God had commanded them to? The story of Abraham and Isaac derives its meaning from something other than its being a familiar, recognizable, everyday occurrence. The test of any literary work is not how broad is its range of representation — for all that breadth may be characteristic of a kind of narrative — but the depth with which the writer reveals whatever it may be that he has chosen to represent.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Writing About Jews (1963)

God, Appearance, Men

“The word vegan should not just be used when referring to people who choose not to eat animal products because being vegan includes doing our best to abstain from participating in the other ways animals are exploited, including animal testing, wearing them, etc. Clearly there is a lot of buzz about the word vegan these days, which is great, but I think it is imperative that we keep the dialogue about this word focused on what it truly means. Veganism is simply about one's ethics and not contributing to the suffering of others.”

Lauren Ornelas American activist

"EVEN Interview with lauren Ornelas" https://www.all-creatures.org/articles/even-lauren-ornelas.pdf, All-Creatures.org (March 2016).

Suffering, People, Animals, Thinking

“One can and should debate whether the tests in question are appropriate for the purposes at hand, but one shouldn’t be surprised when normal curves behave normally.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Section 2, “Local, Social, and Business Issues” Chapter 11, “Company Charged with Ethnic Bias in Hiring” (p. 61)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

Question

“O custodians of civilization, may we ask how long
Will you perpetrate horror, commit wrong on wrong?
Conceded that you want to test the sharpness of your swords,
But how long will you try them on our pliant throats?
You want to see the assembly with rhetoric hot ablaze,
How long can our sighs and wails satisfy your craze?
True that the tales of woe titillate your heart,
But how long can we relate the tales of grief and loss?
We know that you grudge the drought caused by the heavens high,
How long can our tears of blood your withering crops revive>
You require glimmering stars to brighten up your fate,
How far can these grains of dust emblazon your face?
Knowing we are faded leaves of a fallen tree,
How long will you continue to crush us out complete?”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 101
Poetry, custodians of civilization

Loss, Tree, Fate, Star

“A healing state of mind has specific benefits for the healer, however, and for the rapport between therapist and sufferer. A British scientist has observed a particular configuration of brain rhythms in most of the spiritual healers he has tested. (England has thousands of licensed healers, and they are permitted to work in hospitals.) One anxious physician wired to the brainwave device did not show that pattern. Finally the sympathetic researcher said, "Imagine you are about to treat a patient. You have no medicine, no equipment. You have nothing to give but your compassion."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Suddenly the physician's brainwave activity shifted into the "healing state" pattern. p. 277
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves

Imagination, Suffering

“In the NFL, the injury rate is a 100 percent. It's a violent game. And so, how you respond to injury and how quickly you heal from injury is important because if you're not on the field, you're not helping the team. I was reading the research and seeing that a plant-based diet could be beneficial, specifically for recovery. And so I started incorporating it and I started seeing really good results with it. I was recovering better. I wasn't getting as sore. I was a lot less swollen. Basically, to confirm what I was feeling, I got my blood tested. Six months after being on the diet, all of my markers were down, my blood pressure, my cholesterol. But the main thing I was looking at was the inflammation marker in your blood and mine was... almost obsolete. It wasn't there anymore.”

Derrick Morgan (American football) (1989) Player of American football

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Help, Game, Feeling, Reading

“My students have described this process of testing ideas in science as: “Hit it with a sledgehammer and see if it breaks. Whatever survives is the best we've got."”

Greg Craven American teacher and writer

Science is a very adversarial activity! Hence the old adage among physicists: Physics is a contact sport.

Chapter 2 "The Nature of Science" (p. 43)
What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate (2009)

Idea, Science

“For me, as for every leader of the Liberal Party, encouragement for the family, support for small business and respect for values and institutions that have stood the test of time are at the heart of my public life.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Page vii of Tony Abbott's introduction to 2013 edition of his book Battlelines.
Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015), Battlelines book, (2013)

Family, Time, Business, Support

“If, as I maintain and firmly believe, there is no objective definition of intelligence, and what we call intelligence is only a creation of cultural fashion and subjective prejudice, what the devil is it we test when we make use of an intelligence test?”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Thinking About Thinking" in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1975
General sources

Fashion, Intelligence, Making love

“I simply don't think it is reasonable to use IQ tests to produce results of questionable value, which may then serve to justify racists in their own minds and to help bring about the kinds of tragedies we have already witnessed earlier in this century.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Alas, All Human" in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1979
General sources

Thinking, Help, Question

“The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Truth, Home, Wealth, People

“In the light of the coronavirus pandemic, I focus criticism on capitalism and the vulnerabilities it has accumulated for several reasons. Viruses are part of nature. They have attacked human beings—sometimes dangerously—in both distant and recent history. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed nearly 700,000 in the United States and millions elsewhere. Recent viruses include SARS, MERS and Ebola. What matters to public health is each society's preparedness: stockpiled tests, masks, ventilators, hospital beds, trained personnel, etc., to manage dangerous viruses. In the U.S., such objects are produced by private capitalist enterprises whose goal is profit. It was not profitable to produce and stockpile such products, that was not and still is not being done. Nor did the U.S. government produce or stockpile those medical products. Top U.S. government personnel privilege private capitalism; it is their primary objective to protect and strengthen. The result is that neither private capitalism nor the U.S. government performed the most basic duty of any economic system: to protect and maintain public health and safety. U.S. capitalism's response to the coronavirus pandemic continues to be what it has been since December 2019: too little, too late. It failed. It is the problem.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

History, Light, Health, Nature

“I want them to try it. It may work, and it may not work. But if it doesn’t work, it’s nothing lost by doing it. Nothing. Because we know long-term what I want. I want to save lives, and I don’t want it to be in a lab for the next year-and-a-half as people are dying all over the place. In France, they had a very good test. They’re continuing. But we don’t have time to go and say, gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out, and let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories. We don’t have time. I’d love to do that, but we have people dying today. As we speak, there are people dying. If it works, that’d be great. If it doesn’t work, we know for many years malaria, it’s incredible what it’s done for malaria. It’s incredible what it’s done for lupus, but it doesn’t kill people.”

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

On using the drug as treatment for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Coronavirus Task Force Briefing (April 5, 2020). Transcript https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing-transcript-april-5 at Rev. 2020s, 2020, April

Love, Making love, People, Time

“In committing these crimes, the mullahs are testing Western governments. In such circumstances, a lack of resolve or a passive attitude by Western governments will intensify the regime’s terrorist actions.”

Maryam Rajavi (1953) Iranian politician

Maryam Rajavi as quoted in The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/24/iranian-resistence-calls-european-action-against-r/ (24 September 2018)

“We’ve tested more than every other country in the world even put together.”

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

Quoted by * 2020-04-21

Trump just said the US has done more coronavirus testing than the rest of the world. Not even close.

Aaron Rupar

Vox

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/21/21230400/trump-coronavirus-briefing-testing-other-countries-combined

Note: At that time, the US had done just above 4 million tests, while worldwide more than 20 million tests had been done.
2020s, 2020, April

World, Country

“The ejection from their country of a people whose blood is far superior to their own as indicated by all racial tests”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

from "Germany's Futile Effort at Race Betterment", an October 1935 editorial in Good Health, quoted on page 215 https://books.google.ca/books?id=rwwxBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA215 of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living by Brian C. Wilson (published in 2014 by Indiana University Press) and page 313 https://books.google.ca/books?id=GIsuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA313 of "The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek" by Howard Markel (published in 2017 by Pantheon Books)

People, Country

“[W]hen the law is reached... it must be tested and criticised by its discoverer in every conceivable way, till he is certain that the imagination has not played him false, and that his law is in real agreement with the whole group of phenomena...”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Way, Falseness, Imagination, Law

“People who come out of prison can build up the country.
Misfortune is a test of people's fidelity.
Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit.
When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"Word Play"
1950's

Flying, People, Country

“When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing — I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better. ... So I view it as a badge of honour, really,”

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

Trump talked about the 1.59 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, as quoted in * 2020-05-19
Coronavirus: Trump says it’s ‘badge of honour’ for US to lead world in Covid-19 cases
2020s, 2020, May
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-coronavirus-cases-us-covid-death-toll-a9523166.html

Bad luck

“If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases”

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

As quoted in * 2020-05-16
Trump seems to think there’d be no coronavirus if there was no testing. It doesn’t work like that.
Aaron Rupar
Source: https://www.vox.com/2020/5/15/21259888/trump-coronavirus-testing-very-few-cases

“I agree as to the doubtful value of competitive examination. The qualities which you really want, viz., self-control, self-reliance, habits of accurate thought, integrity and what you generally call trustworthiness, are not decided by competitive examination, which test little else than the memory.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Source: Letter to Lord Stanley (May 17, 1857), published in Florence Nightingale on Wars and the War Office: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. Vol. 15 (2011), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 265. ( online on google books https://books.google.at/books?id=NvJ0CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA265)

Self-confidence, Memory

“Best by test.”

Bobby Fischer book My 60 Memorable Games

1960s, My 60 Memorable Games (1969)

“We know with certainty that never could man have acquired the sciences and arts by himself guided only by his natural abilities and without the benefit of instruction. (This applies, e.g., to) medicine, the knowledge of the physiological temperaments, the diseases and their causes, in all their numerous varieties, and the invention of adequate treatment and cure of each of them by drugs or preparations, which could never have been actually tried out. For how could anyone test every prescription on every disease since this would take tens of thousands of years and necessitate the examination of every sick person in the world?”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Regarding the role of experiment and observation, Ibn Hazm: Kitab al-fisal fi’l-milal wa-l-ahwa wa-l-nihal, 5 parts in two vols; Cairo, 1899 and 1903; Vol I, p. 72.

Personality, Art, Knowledge, Nature

“It is a test mentally, physically and spiritually at times. You must try to stay in the process of creating which will always have obstacles.”

Zachary Laoutides (1986) film actor

La France: Paris Tribune (French) 2016: Le drame Roumain, l’architecte Mexicain et le Grec Odyssey

Time

“This ability... to organize, to breathe into others that fire of enthusiasm, that quality of judgment, that spirit of progress, has long been considered by thinking men of commerce as the final and greatest of all qualities, the test of supreme commercial genius.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Thinking, Men

“The United States shows more CASES than other countries, which the Lamestream Fake News Media pounces on daily, because it TESTS at such a high (and costly) level.”

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

2020s, 2020, October

Country

“[I]f self-deception has to be risked anyhow, it might be better to risk it to take a broad view than a narrow view. It may be foolish, perhaps even dangerous, to wander too far from the highway and then be the dupe of fantasies; but it may be even more foolish, even more dangerous in the end, to be so determined to keep to the well-tested road that you wear blinkers, see nothing of the surrounding landscape, and find the road itself, all that you can see, more and more wearisome and detestable.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 7, p. 176

Self-confidence

“I have made my fair share of mistakes. In the beginning when you are trying to find your way, you end up doing stereotypical and cliche roles, I have done all of that. I am at a stage in regional cinema where I am looking to do roles that test and push me to my limit.”

Samantha Akkineni (1987) Indian actress

"When It Comes To Bollywood, Samantha Ruth Prabhu Doesn't Want To Repeat The "Mistakes" She Made In Regional Cinema" https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/when-it-comes-to-bollywood-samantha-ruth-prabhu-doesnt-want-to-repeat-the-mistakes-she-made-in-regional-cinema-2327062. NDTV. (November 18, 2020).

Way

“Folks, this is a time of testing. We face an attack on our democracy and on truth. A raging virus, growing inequity, the sting of systemic racism, a climate in crisis. America′s role in the world. Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But the fact is, we face them all at once. Presenting this nation with one of the gravest responsibilities we′ve had. Now we′re going to be tested.Are we going to step up, all of us? It′s time for boldness, for there is so much to do. And this is certain. I promise you, we will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era. We will rise to the occasion, is the question. Will we master this rare and difficult hour?”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Democracy, Time, Question, Truth

“[T]his is America′s day. This is democracy′s day, a day of history and hope, of renewal and resolve. Through a crucible for the ages, America has been tested anew. And America has risen to the challenge. Today we celebrate the triumph, not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. The people, the will of the people, has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded.We′ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Source: 2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Democracy, History, People, Hope

“To know oneself is the equivalent of knowing God. But in order to acquire this knowledge, the disciple must submit to long and painful process of self-discipline. He must pass though all the test of the severest asceticism. Only after he has prepared himself, will the spiritual master open his heart and render him capable of perceiving the mysteries of the spiritual world.”

Shah Badakhshi Indian poet

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 202

God, Pain, Heart, Knowledge

“The true feeling is a test in continuous experimentation.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il vero sentimento è un test in continua sperimentazione.
Source: prevale.net

Feeling

“Music is a sublime substance with high emotional reactions to be tested carefully in the laboratory of our heart.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La musica è una sostanza sublime ad elevate reazioni emozionali da testare accuratamente nel laboratorio del nostro cuore.
Source: prevale.net

Music, Heart

“As new technologies search out and lace over every interstice in the net of global communication, we find ourselves with increasingly less excuse for…slack. And that, I would argue, is what the World Wide Web, the test pattern for whatever will become the dominant global medium, offers us. Today, in its clumsy, larval, curiously innocent way, it offers us the opportunity to waste time…It will probably evolve into something considerably less random, and less fun — we seem to have a knack for that — but in the meantime, in its gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes phase, surfing the Web is a procrastinator’s dream. And people who see you doing it might even imagine you’re working.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"The Net Is a Waste of Time," The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1996.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

Imagination, Time, Search, Dreams

“I was born in 1948. I can’t recall a world before television…Initially there was nothing on it but “snow,” and then the nightly advent of a targetlike device called “the test pattern,” which people actually gathered to watch.
I imagine that the World Wide Web and its modest wonders are no more than the test pattern for whatever the twenty-first century will regard as its equivalent medium.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"The Net Is a Waste of Time," The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1996.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

World, Imagination, People

“I knew I'd failed a test whose rules I didn't yet understand.”

Tim Winton book Breath

Source: Breath (2008), Ch.18 - p.90

Understanding

“The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.”

Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995) Member of the United States Senate from Maine

Way, Happy

“To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.”

Gail Sheehy (1937) writer, biographer

Life, Life

“It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Pain, Friendship, Truth, Love

“Science is empirical: knowing the answer is nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything.”

Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist

"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t=23m40s (23:40-23:48)

Knowledge, Science

“Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"Motley and Monarch", The North American Review, December 1885

People

“Making hard trade-offs is where leadership is tested.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Twitter

“When I took over we didn't even have a test.”

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

Trump pointed out that in 2017, there was no test for the coronavirus that emerged in 2019, as quoted by * Steve Benen
2020-08-03
Trump points to imagined 'manuals' to argue against virus tests
MSNBC
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-points-imagined-manuals-argue-against-virus-tests-n1235815
2020, August 2020

“We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world.”

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

2020, June 2020

World

“Success, however you define it, is achievable if you collect the right field-tested beliefs and habits.”

Timothy Ferriss book Tools of Titans

Success

“The doctors said they've never seen a body kill the Coronavirus like my body. They tested my DNA and it wasn't DNA. It was USA.”

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

Reportedly said by Trump after he was hospitalized with COVID-19, following an outbreak of the disease in the White House; the quote actually originates from an image featuring a fabricated subtitle overlaid on a video released by the President while he was in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-kill-body/ Misattributed

“The teachings of a parent are fundamental during the adolescence of a child, so that he will one day be ready to face the most difficult test: life.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Gli insegnamenti di un genitore sono fondamentali durante l'adolescenza di un figlio, affinché lui un giorno sia pronto ad affrontare la prova piú difficile: la vita.
Source: prevale.net

Parent, Life

“If people want to get tested, they get tested.”

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

Quoted in * 2020-05-11
Fact check: Trump falsely claims, again, that anybody who wants a test can get one
By Daniel Dale, David Wright, Arman Azad, Holmes Lybrand
CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/11/politics/trump-fact-check-may-11/index.html
2020, May 2020

People

“It may be deeply uncomfortable to reflect on eating savvy creatures who express their emotions. My strong suspicion—which I hope will be tested as a hypothesis—is that some people will decrease their meat and fish intake as they learn more about who they are consuming.”

Barbara J. King (1956) American anthropologist and primatologist

The Inner Lives of "Food Animals" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-inner-lives-of-food-animals/ (March 16, 2017)

Strong, People, Learning, Fish

“A car would not be allowed to drive without crash tests - so there should be an obligation to penetration testing for IT systems.”

Peter Wilfahrt (1986) German author and entrepreneur

9. Cyber-Security-Day, Alliance for Cyber-Security, 06-16-2015.] Source: 9. Cyber-Security-Day https://www.allianz-fuer-cybersicherheit.de/Webs/ACS/DE/Netzwerk-Formate/Veranstaltungen-und-Austausch/Cyber-Sicherheits-Tage/Archiv-der-Termine/Agenda/cst_programm9_160615.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1 German Alliance for Cyber-Security. Retrieved on 08-16-2021.

Cars

“Man's mettle is tested both in adversity and in success. Twice is this true of the soul of a nation.”

Soong Mei-ling (1897–2003) Chiang Kai-shek's wife, First Lady of the Republic of China

Address to the U.S. House of Representatives (February 18, 1943)

Soul, Success

“There are only two options in life: Either you refrain yourself from making promises or from breaking them after you have failed the first test.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“Adam and Eve were still ignorant and new residents of Heaven, yet the tree was placed there to test their IQ level.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Tree

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Paul of Tarsus book Epistle to the Romans

Romans 12:2
Epistle to the Romans

God, Perfection, World

“Well, Okay. But you know, people who've had it – I've had it. I mean, I shouldn't be tested anymore. I got the vaccine.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Source: Sen. Chris Coons and Caitlin Flanagan, Natural Immunity, (2021)

People

“He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the real test of the tragic sense.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

"He" is Miller's friend George Katsimbalis, the "Colossus" of the book's title.
The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Sense

“I'm going to level with you. I'm away for a while. But there's no cash on the premises, no drugs, and the pit bull's tested positive. Twice.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

She doesn't leave a message.
Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Pattern Recognition (2003), Chapter 36, "The Dig" (Parkaboy's outgoing message)

“The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.”

George Jean Nathan (1882–1958) American drama critic and magazine editor

Source: "Test of a Comedian", The American Mercury (September 1929)

“Dinosaur fossils? God put those here to test our faith.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Source: Revelations (1993)
Context: I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. Does that bother anybody else—the idea that God might be … fucking with our heads? I have trouble sleeping with that knowledge. Some prankster God running around, [pantomimes digging] "We'll see who believes in Me now! I am the Prankster God. I am killing Me!"

God, Faith

“Exactly one year ago martial law was introduced. The year that has passed was a great test. We have passed it. It has been passed by the party, by the people's authority and all the citizens. But there is the only winner: the Polish nation. This is the shortest-put truth about the past year.”

Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) Polish military officer and politician

Source: Speech on 1982

People, Truth, Law, Past

“If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)

“Please, as you emerge from your holiday-induced food coma, do give it a quick test so that we can all be happy about the final release next weekend.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds, Linus, 2022-01-02, <nowiki>Linux 5.16-rc8</nowiki>, 2022-01-06 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wg=3dEpPGhz8YvJUDWhFW_GUeASBGmqyw3aPQRfB3ki9w@mail.gmail.com/, 2010s, 2022

Food, Holiday, Happiness

“Honor is something we all profess,
But most of us cheat—some more, some less—
An' the real test isn't the way we do
When there isn't a pinch in either shoe;
It's whether we're true to our best or not
When the right thing's certain to hurt a lot.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

The True Man, stanza 3
Source: When Day is Done (1921)

Hurt, Cheating, Shoe, Way

“The difference 'twixt good and bad is not so very much,
A few more minutes at the task, an extra turn or touch,
A final test that all is right—and yet the men are few
Who seem to think it worth their while these extra things to do.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: All That Matters (1922), p.50 - Clinching the Bolt, stanza 3.

Thinking, Men

“I must be fit for a child's glad greeting,
His are eyes that there is no cheating;
He must behold me in every test,
Not at my worst, but my very best;
He must be proud when my life is done
To have men know that he is my son.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: All That Matters (1922), p.30 - The Boy's Ideal, final stanza.

Cheating, Life, Men

“We have twenty thousand sites where people can go, and I urge people to, you can Google it or go onto any search engine and find out where free testing and the free testing site is available
..”

Kamala Harris (1964) United States Senator from California

2022, January 2022

Search, People

“We know that community testing helps us quickly identify new COVID cases, so we can isolate the virus. Please get tested. We know that vaccines and boosters are effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations and death. Please, go get vaccinated and go get boosted.”

Lou Leon Guerrero (1950) Guamanian politician

Source: Lou Leon Guerrero (2022) cited in: " Governor: 'I am not announcing any new restrictions at this time' https://www.guampdn.com/news/governor-i-am-not-announcing-any-new-restrictions-at-this-time/article_87485994-72b9-11ec-a0b6-271bc150ad80.html" in Pacific Daily News, 11 January 2022.

Communication, Help, Death

“No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon.”

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Source: "The Will to Believe" p. 15 http://books.google.com/books?id=Moqh7ktHaJEC&pg=PA15 Source: 1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

“If you don't feel well, stay home, take a self-test. If you're positive (of COVID-19), isolate.”

Hans Kluge (1968) Belgian doctor, senior official of the WHO

Source: Hans Kluge (2022) cited in: " COVID-19: Europe and US could be headed toward pandemic ‘endgame,’ WHO official says https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2022/01/25/2003772017" in Taipei Times, 25 January 2022.

Home, Feeling

“"It's not exactly to my best
But it may pass the final test;
And should it break, no man can know
It was my hand that made it so.
The thing is faulty, but perhaps
We'll never hear it when it snaps."
Of course the workman couldn't see
The mangled car beneath the tree,
The dead man, and the tortured wife
Doomed to a cripple's chair for life –
His chief concern was getting by
The stern inspector's eager eye.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

The Broken Wheel, fourth and fifth stanzas.
The Passing Throng (1923)

Tree, Dead, Cars, Life

“How much grit do you think you've got?
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?
You may talk of pluck; it's an easy word,
And where'er you go it is often heard;
But can you tell to a jot or guess
Just how much courage you now possess?You may stand to trouble and keep your grin,
But have you tackled self-discipline?
Have you ever issued commands to you
To quit the things that you like to do,
And then, when tempted and sorely swayed,
Those rigid orders have you obeyed?Don't boast of your grit till you've tried it out,
Nor prate to men of your courage stout,
For it's easy enough to retain a grin
In the face of a fight there's a chance to win,
But the sort of grit that is good to own
Is the stuff you need when you're all alone.How much grit do you think you've got?
Can you turn from joys that you like a lot?
Have you ever tested yourself to know
How far with yourself your will can go?
If you want to know if you have grit,
Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit.It's bully sport and it's open fight;
It will keep you busy both day and night;
For the toughest kind of a game you'll find
Is to make your body obey your mind.
And you never will know what is meant by grit
Unless there's something you've tried to quit.”