Quotes about thought
page 32

“What justice also demands, inspired by the same feeling, is the punishment of the guilty and effective guaranties against an active return of the spirit by which they were tempted; and it is logical to demand that these guaranties should be given, above all, to the nations that have been, and might again be most exposed to aggressions or threats, to those who have many times stood in danger of being submerged by the periodic tide of the same invasions. What justice banishes is the dream of conquest and imperialism, contempt for national will, the arbitrary exchange of provinces between states as though peoples were but articles of furniture or pawns in a game. The time is no more when diplomatists could meet to redraw with authority the map of the empires on the corner of a table. If you are to remake the map of the world it is in the name of the peoples, and on condition that you shall faithfully interpret their thoughts, and respect the right of nations, small and great, to dispose of themselves, and to reconcile it with the right, equally sacred, of ethnical and religious minorities - a formidable task, which science and history, your two advisers, will contribute to illumine and facilitate.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Welcoming Address http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/parispeaceconf_poincare.htm at the Paris Peace Conference (18 January 1919).

People, World, Justice, Dreams

“I had by this time heard a number of his public speeches and was beginning to understand the pattern of their appeal. The first secret lay in his choice of words. Every generation develops its own vocabulary of catchwords and phrases, and these date thoughts and utterances. My own father talked like a contemporary of Bismarck, the people of my own age bore the stamp of Wilhelm II, but Hitler had caught the casual camaraderie of the trenches, and without stooping to slang, except for special effects, managed to talk like a member of his audience. In describing the difficulties of the housewife without enough money to buy the buy the food her family needed in the Viktualien Market he would produce just the phrases she would have used herself to describe her difficulties, if she had been able to formulate them. Where other national orators gave the painful impression of talking down to their audience, he had his priceless gift of expressing exactly their own thoughts.”

Ernst Hanfstaengl (1887–1975) German businessman

Quoted in "Hitler: The Missing Years" - Page 67 - by Ernst Hanfstaengl, John Toland - 1994

Money, Pain, People, Secret

“Well I just want to say that we are, you know, very honored by the victory that we had, 306 electoral college votes, we were not supposed to crack 220, you [turning to the Israeli PM] know that right? There was no way to 221, but then they said there's no way to 270 [Netanyahu tries to respond, but Trump continues, so then mouths "I thought he was talking to me"] and there's tremendous enthusiasm out there. I will say that, um, we are going to have peace, in this country, we are going to stop crime, in this country, we are going to do everything within our power to stop long-simmering racism, and every other thing that's going on, because a lot of bad things have been taking place over a long period of time. I think one of the reasons I won the election is we have a very, very divided nation, very divided, and hopefully I'll be able to do something about that, and I, you know, it's something that was very important to me. As far as people, Jewish people, so many friends, a daughter who happens to be here right now, a son-in-law, and three beautiful grandchildren, I think that you're going to see a lot different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years, er, I think a lot of good things are happening, and you're going to see a lot of love, you're going to see a lot of love.”

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

Trump responding to a reporter's question about rising anti-Semitic incidents and a perception of xenophobia in his administration, during a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmfseeZt5fA (15 February 2017) 2010s, 2017, February

Love, People, Peace, Law

“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands.”

Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) English critic, essayist, poet and writer

A Thought of the Nile

Dreams, Time

“The Sin Washer had died centuries ago, and His legacy seemed often to be in the accumulation of connections and power more than the distribution of emotional or spiritual ease. She kept that thought to herself. Wisdom came in many forms, and silence was often the most useful.”

Laura Anne Gilman book Flesh and Fire

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 96

Wisdom, Silence

“Nobody ever comes back from a "missing" ship to tell how hard was the death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last anguish of her men. Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what words on their lips they died. But there is something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar—from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

Source: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), Ch. 17

Death, Men, Age, Peace

“I was at the airport a while back and some guy said "Hey man, I saw you on TV last night." But he did not say whether or not he thought I was good, he was just confirming that he saw me on television. So I turned my head away for about a minute, and looked back at him and said "Dude! I saw you at the airport… About a minute ago… And you were good."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

Guy, Night

“No matter where the skeptical thought originates, or how it gets access to our minds, we see at once that it flattens the level of life and every aspiration. It makes our character less vigorous. The gospel is not simply a philosophy of religion or law of life, but it is an apocalypse, showing the heavens to our thought, and so bringing its spiritual benedictions to every heart and life.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 347.

Life, Religion, Law, Heart

“If laying aside all worldly Greatness and Vain-Glory, I should be ask'd where I thought it was most probable that Men might enjoy true Happiness, I would prefer a small peaceable Society, in which Men, neither envy'd nor esteem'd by Neighbours, should be contented to live upon the Natural Product of the Spot they inhabit, to a vast Multitude abounding in Wealth and Power, that should always be conquering others by their Arms Abroad, and debauching themselves by Foreign Luxury at Home.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Preface
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Men, Happiness, Home, Nature

“I thought you could write something about me that men can't – What I want written – I do not know – I have no definite idea of what it should be. – but a woman who has lived many things and who sees lines and colors as an expression of living – might say something that a man can't – I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore – Men have done all they can do about it. Does that mean anything to you – or doesn't it?”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In a letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, New York 1925; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists, ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 224
1920s

Men, Color, Feeling, Idea

“We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought.”

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

A jibe directed at Ramsay MacDonald, during a speech in the House of Commons, March 23, 1933 "European Situation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1933/mar/23/european-situation#column_544. This quote is similar to a remark (“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met”) made by Abraham Lincoln. [Frederick Trevor Hill credits Lincoln with this remark in Lincoln the Lawyer (1906), adding that ‘History has considerately sheltered the identity of the victim’.] The 1930s

“Innis comments on how the invention of writing and the advancement of military techniques led to the founding of ancient empires: The sword and the pen worked together. Power was increased by concentration in a few hands, specialization of function was enforced, and scribes with leisure to keep and study records contributed to the advancement of knowledge and thought. The written record signed, sealed, and swiftly transmitted was essential to military power and the extension of government. Small communities were written into large states and states were consolidated into empire. The monarchies of Egypt and Persia, the Roman empire and the city states were essentially products of writing.”

Harold Innis book Empire and Communications

2007 edition, p. 30.
Empire and Communications (1950)

Communication, Knowledge, Study

“I'd thought that what I'd like to do is to a translation where I don't have to think about academic considerations. Scholarly considerations. I'll just think about how to present – this is Penguins, after all – how to present this book in such a way that I do the whole of it but at the same time it's enjoyable for the English reader, if possible, and they can get some of the pleasure out of it that I got myself.”

David Hawkes (sinologist) (1923–2009) British sinologist

Source: Interview, 1998, p. 148

Pleasure, Books, Way, Thinking

“MGR has been a great influence in my life, I don’t deny that. But now I am my own person. I have evolved. Hereafter, I am responsible only for myself. Never again will anybody influence me to such an extent that all my thoughts and actions and statements are influenced and made in a particular way just because someone else wants it that way.”

Jayalalithaa (1948–2016) Indian politician and actress

Source: In an interview to Saavy magazine. The Life And Times Of Jayalalitha Ajith Pillai, A.S. Panneerselvan http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205450, 04 May 1998.

Life, Way, Personality

“It’s as if I drifted into this situation. I didn’t ever think about fighting or doing anything risky at all, not until the war came along. I agreed it was necessary, but that seemed obvious; everybody thought so, everybody I knew, anyway. And volunteering, agreeing to take part; that too seemed… natural. I knew I might die, but I was prepared to risk that; it was almost romantic. Somehow it never occurred to me that it might entail privation and suffering. Am I as stupid as those throughout history—those I’ve always despised and pitied—who’ve marched off to war, heads full of noble notions and expectations of easy glory, only to die screaming and torn in the mud?”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Descendant” (p. 40)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

War, Stupidity, History, Nature

“See, I thought that Jay has had too many high class, very hoity-toity guests on this week. And I wanted to bring everything down a notch or two.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Appearing on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno"

“A high-nutrient diet will reduce your desire for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. Within weeks, your taste buds will change, and you'll lose interest in the unhealthy foods you once thought you could never live without. You'll feel more satisfied eating fewer calories than you were eating before. The result is lasting health and permanent weight loss.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Introduction
The End of Dieting (2014)

Health, Food, Feeling, Change

“The business of art is no longer the communication of thoughts or feelings which are to be conceptually ordered, but a direct participation in an experience. The whole tendency of modern communication…is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 73
1950s

Art, Feeling, Communication, Business

“Socialism means power, power, and more power. Thoughts and schemes are nothing without power. The path to power has already been mapped: the valuable elements of German labor in union with the best representatives of the Old Prussian state idea, both groups determined to build a strictly socialist state to democratize our nation in the Prussian manner; both forged into a unit by the same sense of duty, by the awareness of a great obligation, by the will to obey in order to rule, to die in order to win, by the strength to make immense sacrifices in order to accomplish what we were born for, what we are, what could not be without us.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

Idea, Sense

“Friedan: A celebration of women's bodies is all right with me so long as there is no denial of the personhood of women. I suppose sometimes women are sex objects -- and men are too, by the way. It's the definition of women just as sex objects that bothers me. Women can celebrate themselves as sex objects, they can celebrate their own sexuality and can enjoy the sexuality of men as far as I'm concerted. Let's have men centerfolds. [.. ] Playboy's centerfold is fine. It's holding onto your own anachronism and it is not pornographic, though many of my sisters would disagree. It's harmless. […] Playboy strikes me as an odd mixture of sex -- sometimes juvenile --- and forward intellectual thoughts.”

Betty Friedan (1921–2006) American activist

The Playboy Interview (1992)

Women, Men, Sex, Way

““Still feeling guilty, are we? I’d have thought you’d be over that by now.”
“I have a nettlesome little thing called a conscience,” Emily hissed. “Ever hear of it?”
“They’re out of fashion in New York,” Stanton said, and though she guessed she was joking, he didn’t sound humorous.”

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 5, “The Aberrancy” (p. 74)

Feeling, Fashion

“When a tree comes to be viewed, no longer as the body of the tree spirit, but simply as its abode which it can quit at pleasure, an important advance has been made in religious thought.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 9, The Worship of Trees.

Pleasure, Tree

“Babe] also inspired me to become vegan. After having worked all morning with these extraordinary animals, I'd see their relatives on the lunch table. They had ham and duck, every animal except horse. That's when I said, "I've got to try to be a vegan." And for the most part, I have been vegan since 1994. [You were vegetarian before Babe. What inspired that change? ] I rode across the country on a motorcycle in 1975. I remember it was the worst time of year and bloody cold. When I was going through Texas, I went through the feedlots, which I had never seen before. It was a very sobering sight—heartbreaking and awful. It's a corporate system completely out of touch with what is sustainable, what is humane, what is compassionate. At the time, I didn't even know what a vegetarian was. I just thought, "I can't eat [animals] anymore."”

James Cromwell (1940) American actor and producer

"The Tale of an Unprejudiced Heart: An Interview with James Cromwell" http://www.humanesociety.org/news/magazines/2015/01-02/unprejudiced-heart-interview-with-babe-actor-james-cromwell.html by The Humane Society of the United States (17 December 2014)

Change, Time, Animals, Horse

“He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me' -- in those who do not harbor such thoughts hatred will cease.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

1.3-4; as translated by Radhakrishnan.
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Dhammapada

“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002) (Opinion of the Court).

Law, Thinking, Freedom

“Well, I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well.
And I would throw my whole billfold if I thought it would help.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Help

“I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Serpent, in Pt. I, Act I
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“If you push it, it feels good; I don’t know what it is. It must have something to do with kinesthesia. I feel now that I am painting I'm not drawing anything, or even representing non-objective art. You know, you can represent abstract art, too, as well as heads figures, nudes. A lot of abstract artists are just representational painters, you know that. And a lot of figurative artists are very abstract. I don't feel as if I'm doing that. I feel more as if I'm shaping something with my hands. I feel as if I've always wanted to get to that state. Like a blind man in a dark room had some clay, what would he make? I end up with 2 or 3 forms on a canvas, but it gets very physical for me. I always thought I am a very spiritual man, not interested in paint, and now I discover myself to be very physical and very involved with matter. I want to be involved with how heavy things are, a balloon, how light things are, things levitating, pushing forms, make me feel as if my hand is pushing in a head, bulges out here and pushes there.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 73-75

Art, Feeling, Light, Drawing

“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while, on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.”

Alfred Russel Wallace book The Malay Archipelago

The Malay Archipelago (1869)

Love, Life, Death, Hate

“The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same — whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation. This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more than two hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religious morality. … the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which, by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct, and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudoreligion and pseudoscience and the immoral conclusions deduced from them, commonly called "civilization."”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), I

Life, People, Law

“Wars were not made by young men, he thought, yet they had to fight them.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

A Tradition of Victory, Cap 14 "The Toast is Victory!"

Men, War, Fight

“Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan The Critic

Act I, sc. i.
The Critic (1779)

Children

“In the shift from direct democracy to representational democracy, the printed book became an embodiment of thought for the physically absent author; and so the popular art form of the popular book and the pamphlet re-presented ideas and contributed to the public space of political philosophies of the Enlightenment. Television, however, now brings forth this new kind of public space, and it calls into being this new world, not of the educated citizenry in a republic, but of the electropeasantry in the state of Entertainment. Recall how people stopped singing in pubs when they brought in the TV set, and you will appreciate the new passivity in which people stop voting for their representatives as TV takes over the electoral campaigns.”

William Irwin Thompson (1938) American writer

Thompson (1991) Play, from The American Replacement of Nature.

People, Books, World, Education

“The models of management which individuals and organizations use come from a variety of sources. Sometimes the model comes from a theory. The theory may emerge from someone's thoughts about the desired characteristics of a manager, or about the characteristics of competent managers. Sometimes the model comes from a panel. A group of people, possibly in the job or at levels above the job within the organization, generates a model through discussion of what is needed to perform a management job competently.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Source: Competent manager (1982), p. 7.

People

“[From Ernest von Hermanstadt]; Action—action in the sunshine—passion—but little feeling, and less thought: such was meant to be our existence. But we refine—we sadden and we subdue—we call up the hidden and evil spirits of the inner world—we wake from their dark repose those who will madden us. The heart is like the wood on yonder flickering hearth: green and fresh, haunted by a thousand sweet odours, bathed in the warm air, and gladdened by the summer sunshine—so grew it at first upon its native soil. But nature submitteth to art, and man has appointed for it another destiny: it is gathered, and cast into the fire. It seems, then, as if its life had but just begun. A new spirit has crept into the kindled veins—a brilliant light dances around it—it is bright—it is beautiful—and it is consumed! What remains?—A warmth on the atmosphere soon passing away, and a heap of blackened ashes! What more will remain of the heart?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Life, World, Beauty, Art

“A: To get out of the rut is not one day's job or one hour in a day or going to temples, churches or mosques on particular days. We have to reflect on all our thoughts all the time”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Miscellaneous

Time

“Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they think. But that is extremely relative… There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he has demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

People, Truth, Disease, Way

“Men's thoughts, are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches, according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds, are after as they have been accustomed.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Custom and Education
Essays (1625)

Men, Learning

“You cannot know at all what will comes out of you because all your knowledge is running otherwise. What you do not know and what you thought that there would not come at all, that comes out and appears at once, sometimes with a curse and a sigh, and there you have it. - Everything ends well. I made things that I had forgotten for twenty five years. At first I knew them too well, but then I forgot them, I 'had to' forget them. And then I made them. - If some work does not becomes beautiful, well, then you go back to do something else. Worrying doesn't help at all. It will be better later? No, you should not say such things, because you don't know anything about 'becoming better'. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls in Nederlands): Je kunt er niets van weten wat er uit je komt: al je weten komt verkeerd uit: wat je niet weet en heelemaal niet dacht dat er komen zou, dat komt er in eenen, soms met een vloek en een zucht, en daar heb je 't. - Alles komt terecht. Ik heb dingen gemaakt, die ik vergeten had van voor vijf en twintig jaar. Eerst wist ik ze te goed, maar toen vergat ik ze, ik moest ze vergeten en toen maakte ik ze. - Als iets niet mooi wordt, dan ga je maar weer aan wat anders. Tobben geeft niet. Straks beter? Neen, straks beter, dat moet men ook niet meer zeggen. Je weet niet of het straks beter wordt. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek) Quote of Israels, as cited in a letter of A. Verwey, The Hague 28 August 1888, to his wife K. van Vloten; as cited in Briefwisseling 1 juli 1885 tot 15 december 1888 (1995)–Albert Verwey http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/verw008brie01_01/verw008brie01_01_0580.php, pp. 497-98 Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Beauty, Knowledge, Appearance, Help

“I thought today's women were independent and had a lot of sexual freedom. … Well, I guess they fooled me.”

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

In April 2006, about women's disaproval of one-night stands. As quoted in Trump on Clinton in 2008: ‘She'd make a good president' https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-on-clinton-in-2008-shed-make-a-good-president-2016-07-11 (July 11, 2016) by Michael Rothfield and Mark Maremont, MarketWatch. 2000s

Women, Fools, Freedom

“All there is, Consciousness. And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness. Mind is a collection of thoughts which arise and are not disposed of, they are collected. Mind is merely a collection of thoughts, or a collection of impressions which makes up this "me," this self image. That image is made up of various thoughts and impressions not all the thoughts and impressions, but only selected thoughts and impressions. Therefore, the "me" as a self-image is an inaccurate image."”

Ramesh Balsekar (1917–2009) Indian guru

“So, there was a girl.
What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.
“I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please Great Lord, make him die.”
You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.
So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.
She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.
Or so I imagine.
The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose—even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 11 “Possession” (watercolor) (pp. 202-203)

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“One time me and three friends dropped acid and drove around in my dad's car. He has one of those talking cars, we're tripping, and the car goes, "The door is ajar." We pulled over and thought about that for 12 hours. "How can a door be a jar?" … "Why would they put a jar on a car?" … "Oh man, the freeway's melting!"”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

… "Put it in the jar."
Dangerous (1990)

Cars, Time

“Shimrod said: “Once I thought of you as a child in a woman’s body.”
Melancthe smiled a cool smile. “And now?”
“The child seems to have wandered away.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 6, section 1 (p. 436)

Smile

“It was, I saw, a flat to get out of rather than one to stay in. It was a machine for eating and sleeping in, a suitable dwelling place for a working woman, whose main interest is in her work. I disliked this version of myself, which seemed to negate my other activities, reduced them to after-hours amusements, whereas I had always thought them pretty central. These mute, white walls had been silent witnesses to many encounters; nevertheless, they withheld comment, and their very withholding struck me as unfriendly. Unheimlich was the word which came to mind when I stood on the threshold of my bedroom.”

Anita Brookner (1928–2016) British novelist and art historian.

A Friend From England (1987)

Sleep

“Shelter me from the powder
And the finger
Cover me with the thought
That pulled the trigger
Think of me
As one you'd never figured
Would fade away so young
With so much left undone.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Powderfinger
Song lyrics, Rust Never Sleeps (1978)

Thinking

“As soon as we started looking at them, we saw the most remarkable situation. My first thought was, "Great guns! Something's gone wrong with the apparatus!" But then we got later North American tapes and everything seemed normal again.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On the first results from Explorer I, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“In the fossil record of our existence, there is no trace of love. You cannot find it held in the earth's crust, waiting to be discovered. The long bones of our ancestors show nothing of their hearts. Their last meal is sometimes preserved in peat or in ice, but their thoughts and feelings are gone.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Lighthousekeeping (2004)

Love, Feeling, Waiting, Heart

“It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publications in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 1
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII

Books, Learning, Time

“The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 11, section 2 (p. 968)

“And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 14; translated by W. K. Marriot

War, Peace, Art, Way

“It's like being home again, when they bring in the hopelessly mangled person from the mine explosion, or the woman in her third day of labor, or the famished child struggling against pneumonia and my mother and Prim, they wear that same look on their faces. Now is the times to run away tho the woods, to hide in the trees until the patient is long gone and in another part of the Seam the hammers make the coffin. But I'm held here both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that holds the loved ones of the dying. How often I've seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don't they leave? Why do they stay to watch?
And now I know. It's because you have no choice.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss Everdeen, pp. 347-348
The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

Love, Home, Tree, Time

“The fundamental values of a true community are elsewhere: in love, poetry, disinterested thought, the free use of the imagination, the pursuit of non-utilitarian activities, the production of non-profitmaking goods, the employment of non-consumable wealth - here are the sustaining values of a living culture.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Faith for Living (1940)

Love, Imagination, Communication, Wealth

“A common habit of thought… is the idea that space is [a] simple receptacle in which bodies move around, with no two bodies present at the same point. …In modern quantum physics generally, and in the standard model of fundamental physics in particular, physical space appears as a far more flexible framework. Many kinds of particles can be present at the same point in space at the same time. Indeed, the primary ingredients of the standard model are not particles at all, but an abundance of quantum fields, each a complex object in itself, and all omnipresent.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

"Multiversality" (2013)

Idea, Appearance, Time

“Trump is unexpectedly increasing my enthusiasm for Hillary. What he is saying is not based on facts: it's based on immaturity, bad judgment and ignorance, and I think it's going to be hard for people in uniform who are thoughtful about this, to vote for him.”

Merrill McPeak (1936) United States Air Force general

As quoted in "What Does the Military Think of Donald Trump?" https://www.yahoo.com/news/does-military-think-donald-trump-204408128.html (15 June 2016), Time 2016

People, Thinking

“[Darwin’s] inquiry characteristically confines itself to the process of cumulative change. His results, as well as his specific determination of the factors at work in this process of cumulative change, have been questioned; perhaps they are open to all the criticisms levelled against them as well as a few more not thought of; but the scope and method given to scientific enquiry by Darwin and the generation whose spokesman he is has substantially not been questioned, except by that diminishing contingent of the faithful”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of Business Enterprise

Source: The Theory of Business Enterprise, 1904, p. 370

Faith, Question, Change

“It was from Tito that I drew inspiration while searching for the best road to take and when making crucial decisions during our liberation struggle. I often thought, what would Tito do at that moment?”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

Mugabe cited in: Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 400.
1980s

Search, Decision

“The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony—unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil--was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 5 Conspiracy
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Faith

“And the color, the overcast blue
Of the air, in which the blue guitar
Is a form, described but difficult,
And I am merely a shadow hunched
Above the arrowy, still string,
The maker of a thing yet to be made;
The color like a thought that grows
Out of a mood, the tragic robe
Of the actor, half his gesture, half
His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk
Sodden with his melancholy words,
The weather of his stage, himself.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Color, Mood, Weather

“She realized now that she knew little about people outside the courts of Nabban and Erkynland, although she had always thought herself a shrewd judge of humanity. However, it was a larger and much more complicated world on the other side of the castle walls than she had ever suspected.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 13, “The Nest Builders” (p. 406).

People, World

“They (the British Rulers) devised for us an educational system in which all independence of thought would be stifled from the very first stages of one's school life—for, according to Macaulay, such a system was the best means of obtaining suitable clerks for the offices of the East India Company and, besides, of training obedient subjects.”

Muhammad Asad (1900–1992) Austro-Hungarian writer and academic

Source: This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987), Chapter: Calling All Muslims, Radio Broadcast # 6, p 112

Life, Education, School, Training

“If the professors fail to come out with answers to questions posed by us, and to present the evidence in support of their statements, we shall be forced to conclude that far from being serious academicians, they are cynical politicians hawking ad hoc or plausible explanations in the service of a party line. In fact, we shall be justified in saying that they are not Marxists but Stalinists. Marxism is a serious system of thought which offers consistent explanations. Stalinism, on the other hand, is an exercise in suppressio veri suggestio falsi in pursuit of a particular end.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Exercises, Question, Support

“I do ask the right hon. Baronet what is the meaning of overproduction? It means that too much is produced; and what can be thought of a country which produces so much, and where the great mass of the inhabitants possess so little? Does it not show that there is some mal-distribution of production? It is because we have lost sight of that science which teaches the right distribution of wealth…Those who are so fond of laughing at political economy, forget that they have a political economy of their own; and what is it? That they will monopolise to themselves the fruits of the industry of the great body of the community—that they allow the productions of the spindle and the loom to go abroad to furnish them with luxuries from the farthest corners of the world, but refuse to permit to be brought back in exchange what would minister to the wants and comforts of the lower orders. This, in one word, is the true reason why the mass of the people is at this time so wretchedly clothed and so miserably fed.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/jul/08/distress-of-the-country in the House of Commons (8 July 1842) against the Corn Laws. 1840s

People, World, Communication, Science

“A revolution determines, within the social body, an instantaneous process of reorganisation akin to the tumultuous combinations of the elements of a dissolved body that then tend to recompose themselves in a new form.1 This process cannot begin as long as a breath of life animates the old aggregation. As a result, the ideas that would reconstitute society will never take shape so long as a cataclysm, by dealing the old, decrepit society a mortal blow, has not freed the captive elements whose spontaneous and rapid fermentation will organise the new world. All the powers of thought, all the greatest efforts of intelligence are unable to anticipate this creative phenomenon that can break out at any given moment. One can prepare the cradle, but not bring to life the long-awaited being. Right up until the moment of death and rebirth, the doctrines [that will serve as the] bases of the future society remain vague aspirations, distant and hazy glimpses. They are like a blurred and floating silhouette on the horizon, the contours of which cannot be determined or grasped by human efforts.”

Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) French socialist and political activist

On Revolution (1850)

Life, Death, World, Intelligence

“The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?””

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light

Life, People, Pleasure, Way

“As soon as the sound of the Peace-cry of my departing Wife had died away, I began to approach the Stranger with the intention of taking a nearer view and of bidding him be seated: but his appearance struck me dumb and motionless with astonishment. Without the slightest symptoms of angularity he nevertheless varied every instant with gradations of size and brightness scarcely possible for any Figure within the scope of my experience. The thought flashed across me that I might have before me a burglar or cut-throat, some monstrous Irregular Isosceles, who, by feigning the voice of a Circle, had obtained admission somehow into the house, and was now preparing to stab me with his acute angle.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 16. How the Stranger Vainly Endeavoured to Reveal to Me in Words the Mysteries of Spaceland

Peace, Appearance, Housing, Cry

“The Protestants say that it is the duty of every person to read, to understand, and to believe this revelation—that a man should use his reason; but if he honestly concludes that the Bible is not a revelation from God, and dies with that conclusion in his mind, he will be tormented forever. They say:—“Read,” and then add: “Believe, or be damned.” “No matter how unreasonable the Bible may appear to you, you must believe. No matter how impossible the miracles may seem, you must believe. No matter how cruel the laws, your heart must approve them all!” This is what the church calls the liberty of thought. We read the Bible under the scowl and threat of God. We read by the glare of hell.”

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

The Truth (1896)

God, Law, Hell, Understanding

“There have been men before … who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Great Divorce

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 9

Men, God, Christ

“Each thinker has the right to do what Paul did, to set forth truth as he sees it, in the thought-forms of his own day and generation, as long as he does not willfully distort truth merely to fit his own ideas.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Preface, p. 21, sentence 7.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Truth, Idea

“But you like her, don’t you?’ asked Howarth. ‘You like Mrs Connor?’ For himself, thought Howarth, he did not particularly like Mrs Connor. He desired Mrs Connor, however.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Worm and the Ring (1960)

“Years ago I read a man named Machado de Assis who wrote a book called Dom Casmurro. Machado de Assis is a South American writer — black father, Portuguese mother — writing in 1865, say. I thought the book was very nice. Then I went back and read the book and said, Hmm. I didn’t realize all that was in that book. Then I read it again, and again, and I came to the conclusion that what Machado de Assis had done for me was almost a trick: he had beckoned me onto the beach to watch a sunset. And I had watched the sunset with pleasure. When I turned around to come back in I found that the tide had come in over my head. That’s when I decided to write.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Paris Review Interview (1990)

Pleasure, Books, Reading

“Well then you thought that the end was in sight
And then you thought there was nothing to fight
But you had opened your heart with your mind
Oooh here comes one.”

Becky Stark (1976) American singer

Here Comes One
Imagine Our Love (2007)

Heart, Fight

“Man's position in the world is defined by the fact that in every dimension of his being and behavior he finds himself at every moment between two boundaries. This condition appears as the formal structure of our existence, filled always with different contents in life's diverse provinces, activities, and destinies. We feel that the content and value of every hour stands between a higher and a lower; every thought between a wiser and a more foolish; every possession between a more extended and a more limited; every deed between a greater and a lesser measure of meaning, adequacy, and morality.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: The View of Life (1918), p. 1. Opening line of first essay "Life as Transcendence"

Life, World, Behavior, Feeling

“My first exposure to Batman as a character was Batman the TV series. But honestly, I didn’t know it was supposed to be a parody or campy. I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Of course, I was 5 at the time. But all in one fell swoop, I became an instant super hero fan. Later on, as I got older and started reading more comics and getting into the super hero scene, I realized that the Batman show was kind of a comedy. I was reading Neal Adams comics and thinking, "Batman is kind of cooler than that show, he’s kind of scary and mysterious." So my perception of Batman changed over time, and then I went through the periods with Frank Miller and the Tim Burton movies. So now I’ve got these warring Batmans in my head. I still love the Adam West/Batman show. I still love the Neal Adams take on Batman comics. I still love The Dark Knight. All of these things totally contradict each other, and yet it’s fine to me. I’ve said it over and over again, Batman as a character is such a strong concept, he’s the kind of character that you can take him in any number of ways and it still feels right.”

Bruce Timm (1961) Animator

ruce Timm Interview http://www.animationmagazine.net/home-entertainment/batman-under-the-red-hood-clip-and-bruce-timm-interview/ (June 25, 2010)

Love, War, Way, Feeling

“I realized then why we respond to the sound of the waves, and the falling of rain, and wind in the trees. Because they are meaningless. They are nothing to do with us. They are outside our control. They remind us of a time, very early in our lives, when we did not understand the noises around us but simply accepted them in our ears; and so they provide blessed relief from our continual needy attempts to change our world in magic deed or endless thought. Meaningless sound, which welove against the anxiety of action, of pattern-making, of seeking to comprehend and change. As soon as we picked up someting and used it for a purpose, we were both made and damned. Tool-making gave us the world, and we lost our minds.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Epilogue - Cannon Beach
The Lonely Dead (2004)

World, Understanding, Tree, Change

“I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)

World, Learning

“While working at Anna Freud's house, I found an unpublished letter in which he [Freud] told Fliess, less than two weeks after he gave the paper [The Aetiology of Hysteria], "I am as isolated as you could wish me to be: the word has been given out to abandon me, and a void is forming around me." Both the immediate response to the paper, and the subsequent response were ones that Freud had not anticipated: his colleagues thought he was crazy to believe his women patients. This was bound to have a disastrous impact on a young physician with a growing family, eager to open a neurological/psychiatric clinical practice. Where were his referrals to come from, if his colleagues thought he was completely daft? I made this point to Anna Freud.
"Do you believe", I said, "that this could have had anything to do with his later abandonment of the theory?"
"No." She was adamant.
"But tell me, Miss Freud, why did you omit this passage from your published edition of the letters?"”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

"Because it makes my father sound so paranoid," was her response.
"But if it was the truth, then he was not paranoid, he was simply perceptive."
Source: Final Analysis (1990), pp. 175-176

Women, Truth, Family, Housing

“In what time does man live? The thinkers have always known that he does not live in any time at all. The immortality of thoughts and deeds banishes him to a timeless realm at whose heart an inscrutable death lies in wait. … Devoured by the countless demands of the moment, time slipped away from him; the medium in which the pure melody of his youth would swell was destroyed. The fulfilled tranquility in which his late maturity would ripen was stolen from him. It was purloined by everyday reality, which, with its events, chance occurrences, and obligations, disrupted the myriad opportunities of youthful time, immortal time. … From day to day, second to second, the self preserves itself, clinging to that instrument: time, the instrument that it was supposed to play.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

"The Metaphysics of Youth," in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. 1 (1996), pp. 10-11

Death, Youth, Reality, Chance

“In the movement of the proteron te phusei may be found the heart of thought, that which remains veiled in what thought says and which speaking obeys as some secret command. But already, when it speaks, thought no longer speaks what moves it. It no longer retains that emotion even as a fault of speech, as a dark night out of which it would expect to burst forth. Thought excludes the heart that moves it. That which makes thought live is spoiled, set outside of it. But it does not know this.”

Luce Irigaray (1930) feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist

Sexes et Parentés (1987), as translated by G. Gill, Sexes and Genealogies (1993), p. 49

Secret, Heart, Night

“I thought, ‘This is just too terrifying. I’ve never seen anything like that before.’ I hadn’t been allowed to watch horror movies before that. I was so traumatized I literally could not sleep for weeks, and it changed my physical appearance; I lost like 10 pounds. My teachers got so concerned they called my mother, ‘Is there something going on – is she being abused at home?’ My mother found a picture of Robert Englund the actor, and Robert Englund in the Freddy Krueger make-up, and pasted them up near my bedside table. So, every night when I’d go to sleep, literally for like a year, I’d have to look at it and think, ‘It’s just a movie, it’s just a movie, it’s not real.’ I remember thinking that I was going to grow up one day, and be an actress and never make a movie that scares little kids.”

Monica Keena (1979) American actress

Discussing A Nightmare on Elm Street in Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010)

Home, Thinking, Sleep, Teachers

“We are driven to confess that we actually care more for religion than we do for religious theories and ideas: and in merely making that distinction between religion and its doctrine-elements, have we not already relegated the latter to an external and subordinate position? Have we not asserted that "religion itself" has some other essence or constitution than mere idea or thought?”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. IV : The Retirement of the Intellect, p. 38.

Religion, Idea

“The Treatise is also one of the most important books of Western thought ever written. Spinoza was the first to argue that the Bible is not literally the word of God but rather a work of human literature; that “true religion” has nothing to do with theology, liturgical ceremonies, or sectarian dogma but consists only in a simple moral rule: love your neighbor; and that ecclesiastic authorities should have no role whatsoever in the governance of a modern state.”

Steven Nadler (1958) American philosopher

Preface
A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise (2011)

Love, God, Books, Religion

“Steiner goes further than this -- and this is his own central contribution to modern thought. He states that once we have made a habit of remembering Mozart and the stars, we shall find ourselves developing powers of 'spiritual vision.' We shall never again feel ourselves to be helpless victims of the external world.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 169

World, Feeling, Star

“He no longer cared whether he understood human nature or not; he understood quite as much as he wanted; but he found in the Life of Gladstone (II. 464) a remark several times repeated that gave him matter for curious thought. "I always hold," said Mr. Gladstone, "that politicians are the men whom, as a rule, it is most difficult to comprehend;" and he added, by way of strengthening it— "For my own part, I never have thus understood, or thought I understood, above one or two,"”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life, Men, Way, Nature

“The beauty of a move lies not in its appearance but in the thought behind it.”

Aron Nimzowitsch (1886–1935) chess player and theoretician

Quoted in Nimzovich : The Hypermodern (1948) by Fred Reinfeld

Beauty, Appearance

“I absolutely love Bela Lugosi's Count. One thing that always interesting to bear in mind in the great history of Dracula is that, I think almost without exception the film's release has always been surrounded by controversy. Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula at the time was regarded as essentially a kind of B-movie piece of junk. Whereas now, I think it has real luster and appeal to people. I looked at Bella's Count again because Steve was interested in pursuing a sense of the old Universal films, I thought it was kind of good to do that.”

Richard Roxburgh (1962) Australian actor

An Iinterview With Dracula and His Brides http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/05/an-interview-with-dracula-and-his-brides (May 5, 2004)

Love, People, History, Thinking

“I’m vegan now. I’ve been vegan for a month. Wanting to eat cleaner. Also I was trying to play lighter this year, be easier on my joints and on my feet. Getting older and you don’t want to let that age sneak up on you where you just get in the habit of eating whatever you want to eat because I know I’m gonna burn it off when it’s time to play. So just creating better habits. I feel much better. I thought it was all hype. I thought people just said it just because it was a healthier food but I can feel it. I can definitely feel it.”

Damian Lillard (1990) American professional basketball player

"Trail Blazers' Damian Lillard ‘feels much better' after going on vegan diet" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLZ-qndfGWA, video interview with OregonLive Sports (September 25, 2017).

People, Age, Food, Feeling

“It is true that many of the problems with which professional philosophers deal do require quite a high level of abstract thought. However, the same is true of almost any intellectual pursuit: philosophy is no different in this respect from physics, literary criticism, computer programming, geology, mathematics, or history.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

Philosophy : the basics (Fifth Edition, 2013), Introduction

History, Mathematics, Problem

“There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful passage of courage and pride — the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one’s soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. IV (p. 124)

Youth, Soul, Courage, Passion

“Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience…In the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t want to move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.
“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is fundamentally misguided.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 286-287)

People, Law, Way, Idea

“In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) German composer, aesthete and influential music critic

Quoted in: Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Evan Esar (ed.), 1949, p. 156.

“.. I would like to ask your advice as a friend, namely whether you believe I should submit my painting 'Ouden en Jongen' [Old and Young ones'] to Brussels [exhibition] or not. I thought it was a nice painting, but now I read in the Handelsblad that it is so bad. What is truth about that. Please do me the favor to sent me some words sans facon [straight forward], what is your opinion about this.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls' brief, in het Nederlands): .Ik wou echter als vriend van u nl:Johannes Bosboom een raad hebben dit namelijk of gij oordeelt dat ik mijne schilderij 'Ouden en Jongen' naar Brussel [tentoonstelling] zal zenden of niet. Ik dacht dat het een aardig schilderij was, maar nu las ik in het Handelsblad dat het zo slecht is. Wat is daarvan aan. Doe mij svp het genoegen mij hierop een woordje sans facon [zonder omwegen] te dienen, hoe gij het voor u zelf vindt.
Quote from his letter to J. Bosboom, from Bloemendaal, 27 June 1866 (HGA, input no. OV2, schildersbrieven (painter-letters)
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Truth, Reading, Painting

“i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

warty bliggens, the toad

Feeling, Sun, Personality

“The point of Buddhist meditation is not to stop thinking, for … cultivation of insight clearly requires intelligent use of thought and discrimination. What needs to be stopped is conceptualisation that is compulsive, mechanical and unintelligent, that is, activity that is always fatiguing, usually pointless, and at times seriously harmful.”

B. Alan Wallace (1950) American author, translator, teacher, researcher, interpreter, and Buddhist practitioner

Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground up, Wisdom (1993).

Intelligence, Thinking, Time

“It [thought] is a mechanical thing and can solve only mechanical problems. But you want to use it to understand something living; that is the problem. It is not intended for that. Human problems are something living. You cannot use thinking to solve those problems.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Stopped in Our Tracks, Book Two: Excerpts from U.G.'s Dialogues (2005) by K. Chandrasekhar

Understanding, Problem, Thinking

“The contemporary mathematical and symbolic logic is certainly very different from its classical predecessor, but they share the radical opposition to dialectical logic. In terms of this opposition, the old and the new formal logic express the same mode of thought. it is purged from that “negative” which loomed so large at the origins of logic and of philosophic thought — the experience of the denying, deceptive, falsifying power of the established reality. And with the elimination of this experience, the conceptual effort to sustain the tension between “is” and “ought”, and to subvert the established universe of discourse in the name of its own truth is likewise eliminated from all thought which is to be objective, exact, and scientific. For the scientific subversion of the immediate experience which establishes the truth of science as against that of immediate experience does not develop the concepts which carry in themselves the protest and the refusal. The new scientific truth which they oppose to the accepted one does not contain in itself the judgment that condemns the established reality. … In contrast, dialectical thought is and remains unscientific to the extent to which it is such judgment.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 139-140

Truth, Mathematics, Reality, Effort

“(In response to the question; "What are you going to tell a ten year old who wants to play guitar?") For me that's easy; when you expect anything from music, you expect too much. So you play for yourself, you play to enjoy it and you make the most of it for you, period. You don't - I never thought I would be doing this now. I feel so lucky to be doing this now - I can't believe this is what I do all the time. I know I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world, but I just love it. And I hope that's the only reason I'm here, you know? Because I think - I honestly think that that's enough.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

" Josh Homme - Guitar Moves - Episode 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDUHq2mJx0" Noisey (May 29, 2013)

Love, World, Hope, Music

“The income tax is a much less effective tool for reducing inequalities than has often been thought.”

James Mirrlees (1936–2018) Scottish economist

Source: An exploration in the theory of optimum income taxation, 1971, p. 208

“In 1946 it was the first time I saw a Van Gogh, a painting from his years in France. It was excactly what I had always felt here [in the fields of Friesland]: infinity, the unimaginable. I was bewildered and thought: who has been painting here for God's sake? Pink stripes in a green sky, you can't imagine! Ultramarine and carmine in the soil with a big yellow sun behind it..”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: In 1946 zag ik voor het eerst een Van Gogh, uit z'n Franse tijd. Dàt was wat ik hier [in Friesland] altijd gevoeld had: de oneindigheid, het onvoorstelbare. Ik was verbouwereerd, [en] dacht: wie is hier in godsnaam bezig geweest? Roze strepen in een groene lucht, moet je es nagaan. Ultramarijn en karmijn in de bodem, een grote gele zon erachter..
Mens & Gevoelens: Jopie Huisman', 1993

God, Imagination, Time, Sun

“"I wended my way to the graveyard this evening," wrote Anne to Gilbert after she got home. "I think 'wend your way' is a lovely phrase and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard but I really did. Miss Courtaloe's stories were so funny. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can't believe they really did. Somebody has said that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.' I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other… just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you… and I think death would show it to them."”

Lucy Maud Montgomery book Anne of Windy Poplars

Part 1, Ch. 6
Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)

Love, Life, Death, Hate

Quotes about thought page 32

Quotes about thought
page 32