2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica
Context: Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.
Quotes about thing
A collection of quotes on the topic of thing, doing, people, life.
Quotes about thing
cyberspacers.com http://www.cyberspacers.com/exclusive/08020302.html
Chapter II The Vigor of Life http://www.bartleby.com/55/2.html
1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)
Charles Manson's first prison interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbW0agGFv88 by 60 Minutes Australia (1981)
“Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
Variant: I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
Source: 100 Love Sonnets
“Overcome the devils with a thing called love.”
Variant: And I can fight only for something that I love, love only what I respect, and respect only what I at least know.
Source: Mein Kampf
"Letters written from my garden", 1853
“The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
The more it changes, the more it stays the same. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/plus-%C3%A7a-change
The more things change, the more they stay the same. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_more_things_change,_the_more_they_stay_the_same
The more that things change, the more they stay the same.
It changes superficially; but, underneath, its essence is always the same.
Les Guêpes, January 1849, vi
Also quoted by Rush in “Circumstances,” Hemispheres (October 29, 1978).
After the Ending
Lyrics, The Empyrean (2009)
International Special Report: Princess Diana, 1961–1997, The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/diana/stories/glamor0901.htm,
“I got an Irish passport the other day. I love it. It's the best thing in my pocket.”
The Irish Times, 13 December 2008
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 73
Context: For help of this, full meekly our Lord shewed the patience that He had in His Hard Passion; and also the joying and the satisfying that He hath of that Passion, for love. And this He shewed in example that we should gladly and wisely bear our pains, for that is great pleasing to Him and endless profit to us. And the cause why we are travailed with them is for lack in knowing of Love. Though the three Persons in the Trinity be all even in Itself, the soul took most understanding in Love; yea, and He willeth that in all things we have our beholding and our enjoying in Love. And of this knowing are we most blind. For some of us believe that God is Almighty and may do all, and that He is All-Wisdom and can do all; but that He is All-Love and will do all, there we stop short. And this not-knowing it is, that hindereth most God’s lovers, as to my sight.
“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
Letter to Willis Everett, July 4, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 5.
Source: Interview to José Baroja. https://grupoigneo.com/blog/entrevista-jose-baroja-literatura/
Quoted in Comic Sections (1993) by Desmond MacHale
First years at School, p. 25
Brother Ray : Ray Charles' Own Story (1978)
Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal, p. 123, Princeton University Press, 1958.
Muqaddimah (1377)
“For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.”
Frag. B 3, quoted by Plotinus, Enneads V, i.8
To Leon Goldensohn (24 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
To Leon Goldensohn (21 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Variant: Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
Variant: One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.
“Things will be OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end.”
1996
Attributed
“Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!”
Last words[citation needed]
Lord Palmerston had similar last words in 1865: "Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do!"[citation needed]
Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx
Cassandra (1860)
Context: The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organisation do not permit them to act. Christ, if He had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer. Peace be with the misanthropists! They have made a step in progress; the next will make them great philanthropists; they are divided but by a line.
The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ. But do we see one woman who looks like a female Christ? or even like "the messenger before" her "face", to go before her and prepare the hearts and minds for her?
To this will be answered that half the inmates of Bedlam begin in this way, by fancying that they are "the Christ."
People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.
Game Is Not Over - 2005 Oxford Union Address http://www.jeclique.com/onoweb/news-oxfordjune2005.html
Source: On Authority, see https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
“Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.”
Sec. 23
The Antichrist (1888)
“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
Variant: Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.
December 1969; quote from a talk with his audience
Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 12
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: Three things are in your head: First, everything you have experienced from the day of your birth until right now. Every single second, every single hour, every single day. Then, how you reacted to those events in the minute of their happening, whether they were disastrous or joyful. Those are two things you have in your mind to give you material. Then, separate from the living experiences are all the art experiences you’ve had, the things you’ve learned from other writers, artists, poets, film directors, and composers. So all of this is in your mind as a fabulous mulch and you have to bring it out. How do you do that? I did it by making lists of nouns and then asking, What does each noun mean? You can go and make up your own list right now and it would be different than mine. The night. The crickets. The train whistle. The basement. The attic. The tennis shoes. The fireworks. All these things are very personal. Then, when you get the list down, you begin to word-associate around it. You ask, Why did I put this word down? What does it mean to me? Why did I put this noun down and not some other word? Do this and you’re on your way to being a good writer. You can’t write for other people. You can’t write for the left or the right, this religion or that religion, or this belief or that belief. You have to write the way you see things.
“The most fun things in life are either immoral, illegal or they make you fat.”
A New Kind of Man
Song lyrics, A Sense of Wonder (1985)
Reaction upon the death of Muammar Gaddafi, 3 November, 2011. http://wireupdate.com/libya-belarusian-president-lukashenko-says-nato-did-worse-than-the-nazis.html.
Statement (August 2003), as quoted in BBC - Profile: Alexander Lukashenko (9 January 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3882843.stm.
Source: Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic (2000), p. 6
Source: Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic (2000), p. 13
Part XV - General corollary
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
Context: What a noble privilege is it of human reason to attain the knowledge of the supreme Being; and, from the visible works of nature, be enabled to infer so sublime a principle as its supreme Creator? But turn the reverse of the medal. Survey most nations and most ages. Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men's dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkies in human shape, than the serious, positive, dogmatical asseverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational.
Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals
Context: Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: We fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it; and 'tis evident, that this concern must make our speculations appear more real and solid, than where the subject is, in a great measure, indifferent to us. What affects us, we conclude can never be a chimera; and as our passion is engag'd on the one side or the other, we naturally think that the question lies within human comprehension; which, in other cases of this nature, we are apt to entertain some doubt of. Without this advantage I never should have ventur'd upon a third volume of such abstruse philosophy, in an age, wherein the greatest part of men seem agreed to convert reading into an amusement, and to reject every thing that requires any considerable degree of attention to be comprehended.
Stanley
Alessandra
1995-12-07
Dmitri Volkogonov, 67, Historian Who Debunked Heroes, Dies
New York Times
https://web.archive.org/web/20110120220404/http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/world/dmitri-volkogonov-67-historian-who-debunked-heroes-dies.html
.
“For me, the important thing is still the people.”
Source: Fuente: https://portal.ucm.cl/noticias/academico-la-ucm-presento-segunda-antologia-hijo-perra-otros-cuentos
As quoted by Charlie Gasparino in Jeffrey Epstein before he died https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/jeffrey-epstein-exclusive-hedge-fund, FOXBusiness, 13 August 2019
Attributed to "an American President" in Ármin Vámbéry (1884), All the Year Round. It more likely originates in a spoof testimonial that Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) wrote in an advertisement in 1863:
Posthumous attributions
The origins of this quote are unknown. At least two sources can be traced back, but these sources date back to the 1940 years; long time after Lincon's death.
Source 1: The 2003 "Masonic Historiology" from Allotter J. McKowe contains on page 55 (page 55 is dated on Jan. 11, 1944) the poem " What Is a Boy? http://books.google.de/books?id=K5CHWRttt-gC&pg=PA55&dq=desk" from an unknown author. The poem reads:
:: He is a person who is going to carry on what you have started.
:: He is to sit right where you are sitting and attend when you are gone to those things you think are so important.
:: You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they will be carried out depends on him.
:: Even if you make leagues and treaties, he will have to manage them.
:: He is going to sit at your desk in the Senate, and occupy your place on the Supreme Bench.
:: He will assume control of your cities, states and nations.
:: He is going to move in and take over your prisons, churches, schools, universities and corporations.
:: All your work is going to be judged and praised or condemned by him.
:: Your reputation and your future are in his hands.
:: All you work is for him, and the fate of the nations and of humanity is in his hands. Quotes about life http://www.quotesaboutlifee.com/2012/04/best-quotes-on-life-best-sayings-on.html
:: So it might be well to pay him some attention.
Source 2: The newspaper "The Florence Times" from Florence, Alabama (Volume 72 - Number 120) contains in its Wednesday afternoon edition from October 30, 1940 a statement from a Dr. Frank Crane. The entitled "What is a Boy?" statement http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19401030&id=yx8sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I7oEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3738,3720511 reads:
Disputed
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
On portraying characters that might unintentionally hurt Auggie, the protagonist in Wonder, in “Author R.J. Palacio | Interview” https://www.timeout.com/chicago/kids/activities/author-r-j-palacio-interview?pageNumber=2 in TimeOut Chicago (2012 Apr 12)
On thinking about kids who are different in “Author R.J. Palacio talks to LI kids” https://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/family/kidsday/rj-palacio-wonder-author-interview-1.20364470 in Newsday (2018 Aug 8)
"The Mystic Vision" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
Context: It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. But not in this sense — that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal, infinite being, an aspect or modification of it... For we should then have the same baffling question: which part, which aspect are you? what, objectively, differentiates it from the others? No, but, inconceiveable as it seems to ordinary reason, you — and all other conscious beings as such — are all in all. Hence, this life of yours... is, in a certain sense, the whole... This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula... 'Tat tvam asi' — this is you. Or, again, in such words as 'I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world.'
Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you … For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.
[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1228031674413268997]
Tweets by year, 2020
Source: The Idea of History (1946), p. 10
“The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.”
Oscar acceptance speech for Mystic River, 76th Annual Academy Awards - Best Actor in a Leading Role http://www.oscars.org/76academyawards/winners/01_lead_actor.html (2004-02-29)
Marco Rubio Press Release: VIDEO: Rubio Urges Congress To Put Politics Aside On Zika https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=628288BE-603B-4F10-8867-C3EACDE33E59 (28 April 2016)
2010s, 2016
From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: There is more recognition now that things are changing, but not because there is a political move to do it. It is simply a result of the information being there. Our survival won’t depend on political or economic systems. It’s going to depend on the courage of the individual to speak the truth, and to speak it lovingly and not destructively. It’s saying what you really know and feel is the truth, in all directions. Our greatest vulnerability lies in the amount of misinformation and misconditioning of humanity. I’ve found the educations systems are full of it. You have to examine each word and ask yourself, "Is that the right word for that?" — the integrity and the courage of the individual to speak his own truth and not to go along with the crowd, yet not making others seem ignorant. After a while, if enough human beings are doing it, then everybody will start going in the right direction.
As quoted in Beyond Civilization : Humanity's Next Great Adventure (1999), by Daniel Quinn, p. 137
From 1980s onwards
Cited from Lord Rayleigh, The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson (1943), p. 199.
Attributed
Source: "May 4, 98" https://66.media.tumblr.com/7f99426ff633f0e174ad13f215dc6b85/tumblr_phql76LS101v18yoxo1_1280.png (4 May 1998)
Source: Patriotism and Christianity http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Christianity (1896), Ch. 17
Context: One free man will say with truth what he thinks and feels amongst thousands of men who by their acts and words attest exactly the opposite. It would seem that he who sincerely expressed his thought must remain alone, whereas it generally happens that every one else, or the majority at least, have been thinking and feeling the same things but without expressing them.
And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.
And as soon as this opinion is established, immediately by imperceptible degrees, but beyond power of frustration, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.
Whereas at present, every man, even, if free, asks himself, "What can I do alone against all this ocean of evil and deceit which overwhelms us? Why should I express my opinion? Why indeed possess one? It is better not to reflect on these misty and involved questions. Perhaps these contradictions are an inevitable condition of our existence. And why should I struggle alone with all the evil in the world? Is it not better to go with the stream which carries me along? If anything can be done, it must be done not alone but in company with others."
And leaving the most powerful of weapons — thought and its expression — which move the world, each man employs the weapon of social activity, not noticing that every social activity is based on the very foundations against which he is bound to fight, and that upon entering the social activity which exists in our world every man is obliged, if only in part, to deviate from the truth and to make concessions which destroy the force of the powerful weapon which should assist him in the struggle. It is as if a man, who was given a blade so marvelously keen that it would sever anything, should use its edge for driving in nails.
We all complain of the senseless order of life, which is at variance with our being, and yet we refuse to use the unique and powerful weapon within our hands — the consciousness of truth and its expression; but on the contrary, under the pretext of struggling with evil, we destroy the weapon, and sacrifice it to the exigencies of an imaginary conflict'.
As quoted in Loose Cannons: Devastating Dish from the World's Wildest Women (1998) by Autumn Stephens, p. 270
Equinoctial Regions of America (1814-1829)
This statement is not to be found in the works of Herodotus. It appears in the acknowledgements to Mark Twain's A Horse's Tale (1907) preceded by the words "Herodotus says", but Twain was simply summarizing what he took to be Herodotus' attitude to historiography.
Misattributed
Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 2. Search and Research
Source: Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals
Source: "lost" interview on rocksalt.mx http://rocksalt.mx/?p=844
Time and Individuality (1940)
Source: As quoted in 1990, "Rudolf Nureyev, Charismatic Dancer Who Gave Fire to Ballet's Image, Dies at 54" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/07/arts/rudolf-nureyev-charismatic-dancer-who-gave-fire-to-ballet-s-image-dies-at-54.html (7 January 1993)