Quotes about thought
page 52

“Thus did the Holy Harlots unhinge the brains of man,
and when they met and clashed with the pure Mountain Maidens,
they raised their white arms high, their armpits smelled of musk,
and, as the rites decreed, both fought their verbal war:
"God swoops from mountain peeks to eat and play on earth;
we are his food and drink and even his sacred toys —
and learn, O sterile maids, we are his soft, sweet mates.
Let her now leave who fears to merge with her dread God!"
The scornful savage mouth of Krino flashed reply:
"We will not leave! We guard the innocent soul of man!
God is a spirit with pure white wings, a soul that sails,
light, disembodied, deep in our thoughts, without embrace.
It's we who keep the world in bloom with virgin souls!"”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

From the Bull Ritual, Book VI, line 197
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

God, War, World, Fear

“The power of thought,—the magic of the mind!”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Canto I, stanza 8.
The Corsair (1814)

“This Idea of Spinoza's we must allow to be in the main true and well-grounded; absolute substance is the truth, but it is not the whole truth; in order to be this, it must also be thought of as in itself active and living, and by that very means it must determine itself as mind. But substance with Spinoza is only the universal and consequently the abstract determination of mind; it may undoubtedly be said that this thought is the foundation of all true views — not, however, as their absolutely fixed and permanent basis, but as the abstract unity which mind is in itself. It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy. For as we saw above … when man begins to philosophize, the soul must commence by bathing in this ether of the One Substance, in which all that man has held as true has disappeared; this negation of all that is particular, to which every philosopher must have come, is the liberation of the mind and its absolute foundation.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, comparing Spinoza's philosophy to that of the Eleatics, in Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1896), Vol. 3, Ch. I : The Metaphysics of the Understanding, § 2 : Spinoza, p. 257

Truth, Soul, Idea, Universe

“With that she went and fetched the box in which she kept her many drugs, healing or deadly, and putting it on her knees she wept. Tears ran unchecked in torrents down her cheeks and drenched her lap as she bemoaned her own sad destiny. She was determined now to take a poison from the box and swallow it; and in a moment she was fumbling with the fastening of the lid in her unhappy eagerness to reach the fatal drug. But suddenly she was overcome by the hateful thought of death, and for a long time she stayed her hand in silent horror. Visions of life and all its fascinating cares rose up before her. She thought of the pleasures that the living can enjoy. She thought of her happy playmates, as a young girl will. And now, setting its true value on all this, it seemed to her a sweeter thing to see the sun than it had ever been before. So, prompted by Hera, she changed her mind and put the box away.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 802–818

Life, Death, Hate, Happiness

“Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Love, Life, Happiness, Pleasure

“Thought must be free to range as it likes over all phenomena and philosophy, unhampered by compulsions. A man cannot be bludgeoned by vulgar threats of damnation, into accepting that what other people say is true.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.42

People

“If you want to know what Churches were made for, come down here on some great festival of the Virgin; but come alone! That kind of knowledge cannot be taught and can seldom be shared. We are not now seeking religion; indeed, true religion generally comes unsought. We are trying only to feel gothic art. For us the world is not a schoolroom or a pulpit, but a stage, and the stage is the highest yet seen on earth. In this church the old romanesque leaps into the gothic under our eyes; of a sudden, between the portal and the shrine, the infinite rises into a new expression, always a rare and excellent miracle in thought.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

World, Religion, Art, Feeling

“I'm gonna say that I've had some incredibly unholy thoughts about you.”

Barry Michaels (1952) American radio personality

First words of an interview with http://www.thebarrymichaels.com/Dana%20For%20Web.mp3 Dana Delany.

“If so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby. However, though the power of gravity is not sensibly weakened in the little change of distance, at which we can place ourselves from the centre of the earth, yet it is very possible that, so high as the moon, this power may differ much in strength from what it is here. To make an estimate what might be the degree of this diminution, he considered with himself that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, no doubt the primary planets are carried round the sun by the like power. And, by comparing the periods of the several planets with their distances from the sun, he found that if any power like gravity held them in their courses, its strength must decrease in the duplicate proportion of the increase of distance. This he concluded by supposing them to move in perfect circles concentrical to the sun, from which the orbits of the greatest part of them do not much differ. Supposing therefore the power of gravity, when extended to the moon, to decrease in the same manner, he computed whether that force would be sufficient to keep the moon in her orbit. In this computation, being absent from books, he took the common estimate, in use among geographers and our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the earth. But as this is a very faulty supposition, each degree containing about 691/2 of our miles, his computation did not answer expectation; whence he concluded, that some other cause must at least join with the action of the power of gravity on the moon. On this account he laid aside, for that time, any farther thoughts upon this matter.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 50-51 Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Books, Change, Time, Sun

“The British representative was an ambassador, and had a spacious, suitable, and well-furnished house in which he could entertain fitly and largely, and to which the highest Russian officials thought it an honor to be invited. The American representatives were simply ministers; from time immemorial had never had such a house; had generally no adequate place for entertaining; had to live in apartments such as they might happen to find vacant in various parts of the town—sometimes in very poor quarters, sometimes in better; were obliged to furnish them at their own expense; had, therefore, never been able to obtain a tithe of that social influence, so powerful in Russia, which was exercised by the British Embassy.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2 (1922), p. 19

Exercises, Time, Parting, Housing

“There is a great difference between being raised to an office and descending to one; which is my case. There is also a great difference between serving where you have a fair prospect of honor and laurels, and where you have no prospect of either, let you discharge your duty ever so well. Nobody ever heard of a Quarter-master in history, as such, or in relating any brilliant action. I engaged in this business as well out of compassion to your Excellency as from a regard to the public. I thought your task too great, to be Commander-in-chief and Quarter-master at the same time. Money was not my motive. For you may remember I offered to serve a year unconnected with the accounts, without any additional pay to that which I had as Major-General. However, this proposition was rejected as inadmissible. Then I told the Committee that I would serve upon the same terms that Mr. Cox and Mr. Pettit could be engaged upon; and I have nothing more now, although I have a double share of duty, and am held responsible for all failures.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

Money, History, Motivation, Failure

“What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything.
Then his mind's eye looked up and caught his own image and realized where he was and what he was seeing and…I don't know what really happened…but the slippage that Phædrus had felt earlier, the internal parting of his mind, suddenly gathered momentum, as do the rocks at the top of a mountain. Before he could stop it, the sudden accumulated mass of awareness began to grow and grow into an avalanche of thought and awareness out of control; with each additional growth of the downward tearing mass loosening hundreds of times its volume, and then that mass uprooting hundreds of times its volume more, and then hundreds of times that; on and on, wider and broader, until there was nothing left to stand.
No more anything.
It all gave way from under him.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20

Religion, Way, Mountain, Knowledge

“Family, clan, country, union of nations — each unit strives toward peace, toward betterment of life. Each unit of cooperation and communal life needs perfecting. No one can fix the limits of evolution. By this line of reasoning a worker becomes a creator. Let us not be frightened by the problems of creativeness. Let us find for science unencumbered paths. Thus, thought about perfectionment will be a sign of joy.”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 1
New Era Community (1926)

Life, Family, Peace, Communication

“In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this very easily in ourselves.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

Thinking, Parting

“Dana Perino: And believe me, there were some people who really wanted me from the podium to go after MSNBC. And I just thought it was a bridge too far, not something that should be done from the White House. If they want to have the DNC bash Fox News all they want, you know, so be it. But, I would not do it from the White House. I don't think it's presidential, and I think people would see through it.
Brian Kilmeade: And not only did you not go after them, you gave them interviews, as did the president.
Steve Doocy: Sure.
Brian Kilmeade: Gave them all interviews. Read Ronald Reagan’s diaries…
Dana Perino: Well, towards the end we didn’t do a lot with MSNBC. That’s, that is the case.”

Dana Perino (1972) Former White House Press Secretary

Fox & Friends, October 19, 2009 http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/19/perino-msnbc/

People, Thinking, Reading, Housing

“The subversive character of truth inflicts upon thought an imperative quality. Logic centers on judgments which are, as demonstrative propositions, imperatives, — the predicative “is” implies an “ought.” … Verification of the proposition involves a process in fact as well as in thought: (S) must become that which it is. The categorical statement thus turns into a categorical imperative; it does not state a fact but the necessity to bring about a fact. For example, it could be read as follows: man is not (in fact) free, endowed with inalienable rights, etc., but he ought to be.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 132-133

Truth, Reading

“I've often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Remarks at conference sponsored by the American Histadrut Cultural Exchange Institute, Harriman, New York (February 17–19, 1967); reported in Judd L. Teller, ed., Government and the Democratic Process; A Symposium by American and Israeli Experts (1969), p. 16
Other speeches and writings

Wisdom, People

“Sokolnikov: "I am saying what we thought at that time. We figured that we had certain chances. Where did we see them? We saw them in the play of international contradictions. We considered that, let us say, complete sway in the Soviet Union could never be established by German Fascism because it would encounter the objections of other imperialist rivals, that certain international conflicts might occur, that we could rely on other forces which would not be interested in strengthening Fascism"”

Grigori Sokolnikov (1888–1939) Soviet diplomat

Dialogue between state prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky and Sokolnikov during his trial. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism?, pp. 270.

Chance, Time

“It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. (I had thought I was a Conservative but I now see that I was not really one at all.)”

Keith Joseph (1918–1994) British barrister and politician

Keith Joseph, Reversing the Trend: A Critical Reappraisal of Conservative Economic and Social Policies (Barry Rose, 1975).
1970s

“During the summer of 1765 the happy phrase of Isaac Barré—"these sons of liberty"—was everywhere repeated, and was put on as a kind of protective coloring by strong patriots, who henceforth thought of themselves as Sons of Liberty and no traitors at all. Rather were they traitors who would in any way justify an act of tyranny; most of all those so-called Americans, accepting the office of Stamp Master, who cunningly aspired to make a farthing profit out of the hateful business of enslaving their own countrymen.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

Hate, Happiness, Color, Way

“Dicko: I thought you sung a dismal song really well. You said it was a challenge for you. It was a challenge for me to listen to it cause I just couldn't follow it. I wanted to party tonight. I thought there were some great songs and that was just a bit of a speed bump in the evening for me and it's a shame cause I think you are growing. I wanted you to tear it up tonight and I think the song weighed you down but I thought you delivered it well.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 10

Thinking, Tear, Speed

“"Disaffected, disadvantaged, disenfranchised is how progressives prefer to depict the Muslim murderers in their midst. After all, progressives hail from the school of therapeutic “thought” that considers crime to have been caused, not committed. Misbehavior is either medicalized and outsourced to state-approved experts, or reduced to the fault of the amorphous thing called society."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Camel-ate-my-homework Theory of Culpability” http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/01/30/the-camel-ate-my-homework-theory-of-culpability/, Libertarian Alliance, January 30, 2015. 2010s, 2015

School

“He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it…. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 11: "God"

Evil, Chance, Success

“Commonly thought,’ you say? Many things are commonly thought, but perhaps not commonly thought all the way through.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 9 “A Curious Tale for Countess Amberglass” section 1 (p. 435)

Way

“The next time you have a thought…let it go.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

You Can't Fix Stupid

Time

“Well, at first I thought it was a very inappropriate question, you know, for the presidency to be decided on a scientific matter. And uh, I um, I think it's a theory — the theory of evolution. And I don't accept it, you know, as a theory. But it really doesn't bother me, it's not the most important issue for me, to make the difference in my life, to understand the exact origin. I think the creator that I know, uh, you know created us, every one of us and created the universe, and the precise time and manner and uh, you know, I just don't think we're at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

asked if he believes the theory of evolution to be true or false
2000s, 2006-2009

Life, Understanding, Question, Thinking

“The fundamental tenet of Steiner's teaching is that if we take the trouble to recognize the independent existence of the inner worlds of thought, and keep the mind turned in that direction, we shall soon become increasingly conscious of their reality. We are not, as Sartre believed, stranded in the universe of matter like a whale on a beach. That inner world is our natural home. Moreover, once we grasp this truth, we can also recognize that we ourselves possess an "essential ego," a "true self," a fundamental identity that goes far beyond our usual feeble sense of being "me."”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 26

Truth, World, Home, Nature

“I travel through your waist as through a river,
I voyage your body as through a grove going,
as by a footpath going up a mountain
and suddenly coming upon a steep ravine
I go the straitened way of your keen thoughts
break through to daylight upon your white forehead
and there my spirit flings itself down, is shattered
now I collect my fragments one by one
and go on, bodiless, searching, in the dark…. you take on the likeness of a tree, a cloud,
you are all birds and now you are a star,
now you resemble the sharp edge of a sword
and now the executioner's bowl of blood,
the encroaching ivy that over grows and then
roots out the soul and divides it from itself”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

Way, Travel, Soul, Search

“Friends, last night I watched the Hollywood (Paramount) movie Noah. It is much, much worse than I thought it would be—much worse. The director of the movie, Darren Aronofsky, has been quoted in the media as saying that Noah is “the least biblical biblical film ever made,” and I agree wholeheartedly with him. I am disgusted. I am going to come right out and say it: this movie is disgusting and evil—paganism! Do you really want your family to see a pagan movie that portrays Noah as a psychopath who says that if his daughter-in-law’s baby is a girl then he will kill her as soon as she’s born? And when two girls are born, bloodstained Noah (the man the Bible calls “righteous” in Genesis 7:1) brings a knife down to the head of one of the babies to kill her—and at the last minute doesn’t do it. And then a bit later, Noah says he failed because he didn’t kill the babies. How can we recommend this movie and then speak against abortion? Psychopathic Noah sees humans as a blight on the planet and wants to rid the world of people. I feel dirty—as if I have to somehow wash the evil off myself. I cannot believe there are Christian leaders who have recommended that people see this movie.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"The Noah Movie is Disgusting and Evil: Paganism!" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/03/28/the-noah-movie-is-disgusting-and-evil-paganism/, Around the World with Ken Ham (March 28, 2014) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

People, World, Family, Law

“A few months ago I read an interview with a critic; a well-known critic; an unusually humane and intelligent critic. The interviewer had just said that the critic “sounded like a happy man”, and the interview was drawing to a close; the critic said, ending it all: “I read, but I don’t get any time to read at whim. All the reading I do is in order to write or teach, and I resent it. We have no TV, and I don’t listen to the radio or records, or go to art galleries or the theater. I’m a completely negative personality.”
As I thought of that busy, artless life—no records, no paintings, no plays, no books except those you lecture on or write articles about—I was so depressed that I went back over the interview looking for some bright spot, and I found it, one beautiful sentence: for a moment I had left the gray, dutiful world of the professional critic, and was back in the sunlight and shadow, the unconsidered joys, the unreasoned sorrows, of ordinary readers and writers, amateurishly reading and writing “at whim”. The critic said that once a year he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or an article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives, but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence: Read at whim! read at whim!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poets, Critics, and Readers”, pp. 112–113
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Love, Life, Happiness, Books

“I have frequently had men describe the following scenario to me: "If at the beginning of a relationship, I keep the woman at a distance and don't want to get too close, she feels that I am pushing her away and that I am not making a commitment—that I am afraid to be intimate. When I finally let down my guard and try to be intimate and close, when I really make myself vulnerable and give up control, which is uncomfortable for me, then I feel really inadequate. She blames me for things that she never blamed me for when I kept my distance. When I start to get close, that's when I am accused of saying the wrong thing or trying to control her. So I am better off staying at a distance and letting her complain about a lack of intimacy."Stewart, age thirty-six, described it this way: "Maryann was liberated on the surface, but the undertow was very different. I would find out a couple of evenings after I had been with her that she was very angry and I wouldn't even know that I had done something wrong. She would be angry because she said I wasn't really involved enough. I didn't care enough about her. The irony is that the women in my life whom I've made the greatest effort to get close to are the ones who always wind up saying they are angry because I wasn't getting close. When I made no effort to get close and really kept my distance, I never got any complaints. The moment I felt I was really opening myself up to be intimate, that was when I was found to be failing. That is the double bind for me."Another such truth was experienced by Alex. He said, "If you keep the control, the distance, then the woman is kept insecure; and so long as she is insecure about the relationship, she will be less inclined to attack. If she's interested in you, but you keep her at a distance, she will be careful about attacking you. She won't criticize you because she's afraid of you. The moment you cross the barrier and actually start to get committed, you find that she begins to feel that you are inadequate as a partner. You know then and there that you are never going to be able to satisfy her."I found this to be true sexually. At the times when I personally thought I was the most sensitive and the most involved and caring as a lover, I would find out often that I was a failure. At the times when I allowed myself to be totally selfish, without apology and didn't give one thought to what the woman experienced, I never got any complaints. I was never told I was selfish as a lover. In fact, I was often told that I was wonderful."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why men and women can't talk to each other: the hidden unconscious messages of gender, pp. 39–40
The Inner Male (1987)

Life, Women, Men, Truth

“Poetry, finally, is the form of art where not only are the unities of time, place, and action freed from the restrictive bounds of the single instant, the single spot, the single simple transaction, but the medium of embodiment is thought itself, with its completely articulate utterance in language. Here the very source of the ideal view of the world, the very origin of the creative artistic impulse, becomes the material and the instrument of its own purpose, the executor of its own will. The scope of the creative faculty is therefore the utmost conceivable, and poetry rightfully takes the highest place as the art of the greatest possibilities — the art, indeed, of an all-inclusive compass, as at length completely self-supplying and self-directing.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.210

World, Art, Time

“I was seized with a strong desire to write poetry, so strong, in fact, that in imagination I thought I heard a voice crying in my ears –"Write! Write"I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself– "I know nothing about poetry."”

William McGonagall (1825–1902) weaver, actor, poet

"The Autobiography of Sir William Topaz McGonagall".
Other works

Imagination, Strong, Cry

“Bom. So have I heard on Afric's burning shore
A hungry lion give a grievous roar;
The grievous roar echoed along the shore.
Artax. So have I heard on Afric's burning shore
Another lion give a grievous roar;
And the first lion thought the last a bore.”

William Barnes Rhodes (1772–1826) British dramatist

Bombastes Furioso (1810), Act i, scene 4, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“That first novel of mine, Non-Stop, is directly attributable to Heinlein. His "Common Sense" seemed to me such a good story, but bereft of any human feelings. I thought long about that story, and then I thought how wonderful it would be to write about a spaceship in which people have been imprisoned for generations and to put in something of the human feeling. So that novel is directly attributable to Heinlein. I thought, in my youthful arrogance, that I could do it better — I didn't! I thought I could do it differently, and I think I did do it differently. And I suppose that on the whole, I've concentrated on doing things differently ever since.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Locus interview (2000)

People, Youth, Feeling, Thinking

“We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else, we didn’t realise they hated each other so much.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Unguarded comment in Leeds while discussing rival devolution bids — "Cameron caught on camera making 'people in Yorkshire hate each other' jibe" Press Association, The Guardian (11 September 2015) http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/11/david-cameron-yorkshire-people-hate-each-other-caught-camera?CMP=fb_gu 2010s, 2015

Hate, People

“He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn't think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Hate, Way, Imagination, Thinking

“Zoe slowed but didn’t stop. She kept her hands in front of her, still a judicious distance from the animal.
But close enough to smell it. Close enough to see the steam rising from its warm underbelly into the night air. Four billion years of un-Earthly evolution had shaped this aggregate of cells, this beast. She looked at it. And, amazingly, it looked at her. An impossible distance from the planet of her birth, this miracle had happened: Clay had made life. Life regarded life. First light, Zoe thought.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Bios

Source: Bios (1999), Chapter 15 (p. 140)

Life, Birth, Light, Animals

“Every so often, every artist feels: 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985 I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

Feeling, Painting

“The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it. For none deny, there is a God, but those, for whom it maketh that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man, than by this; that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it, within themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened, by the consent of others.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Atheism
Essays (1625)

God, Fools, Heart

“Wild was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Twenty-Second of December http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page154, st. 1

Sea

“Income taxation appeals to the governing class because in its everlasting urgency for power it needs money. Income taxation appeals to the mass of people because it gives expression to their envy; it salves their sense of hurt. The only beneficiaries of income taxation are the politicians, for it not only gives them the means by which they can increase their emoluments but it also enables them to improve their importance. The have-nots who support the politicians in the demand for income taxation do so only because they hate the haves; although they delude themselves with the thought that they might get some of the pelt the fact is that the taxing of incomes cannot in any way improve their economic condition. So that, the sum of all the arguments for income taxation comes to political ambition and the sin of covetousness.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 27

Money, Hate, People, Way

“I hate the thought of animals being killed just for our pleasure…”

Leona Lewis (1985) British singer-songwriter

Bang Showbiz, December 2007

Hate, Pleasure, Animals

“What mystifies me is how he or any one else can determine what is a desirable type of industry such as should qualify for special assistance of this kind. In my own simple way I should have thought that a desirable industry was, almost by definition, one which could establish itself and thrive without special assistance in ordinary market conditions. Anything else suggests a degree of omniscience which I, at least, am not prepared to credit even the most expert with. I trust the commercial judgment only of those who are themselves taking the risks.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 27, 1968, page 212.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Way

“I thought of a great way to celebrate my Finnish heritage at home. I'm going to look into opening a chain of strip clubs, and I'll call them Lapland!!!”

Pamela Anderson (1967) Canadian-American model, producer, author, former showgirl

The London Paper, Wed 27 June 2007, p. 21.

Way, Home

“Whose is the world? Whose is thought? His who loves them.”

Vilhelm Ekelund (1880–1949) Swedish poet

Source: The Second Light (1986), p. 71

Love, World

“M: If you cannot impress people simply by being part of the great fat human race, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you don't impress people by the way you look, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you are now going to ask is everything I did just a way to gain some form of attention, well that's not entirely true. It is in a small way, but that's in the very nature of being alive.
PM: Wanting to be loved?
M: To be seen, above all else. I wanted to be noticed, and the way I lived and do live has a desperate neurosis about it because of that. All humans need a degree of attention. Some people get it at the right time, when they are 13 or 14, people get loved at the right stages. If this doesn't happen, if the love isn't there, you can quite easily just fade away. … In a sense I always felt that being troubled as a teenager was par for the course. I wasn't sure that I was dramatically unique. I knew other people who were at the time desperate and suicidal. They despised life and detested all other living people. In a way that made me feel a little bit secure. Because I thought, well, maybe I'm not so intense after all. Of course, I was. I despised practically everything about human life, which does limit one's weekend activities”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "Wilde child", interview by Paul Morley, Blitz (April 1988).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Love, Life, People, Way

“It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that delivers better performance but requires more thought.”

Edwin Thompson Jaynes (1922–1998) American physicist

Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (2003)

Way, Appearance

“Each language is the sign and power of the soul of the people which naturally speaks it. Each develops therefore its own peculiar spirit, thought-temperament, way of dealing with life and knowledge and experience…. A nation, race or people which loses its language, cannot live its whole life or its real life. And this advantage to the national life is at the same time an advantage to the general life of the human race.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

December, 1917
India's Rebirth

Life, People, Way, Soul

“Nothing helped; I was fading helplessly away with open eyes, staring straight at the ceiling. Finally I stuck my forefinger in my mouth and took to sucking on it. Something began stirring in my brain, some thought in there scrambling to get out, a stark-staring mad idea: what if I gave a bite? And without a moment's hesitation I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth together. I jumped up. I was finally awake.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Hunger (1890), p. 110

Idea, Help, Madness

“What the structure of Rawls’s argument indicates is a more fundamental feature of his thought. This is an amphibious world, which contains just enough land of real social reference to avoid the tricky deeps of first philosophy (the gesture is roughly: let’s start out from where we’re at – in other words, Bush–Clinton country), while floating carefully enough on the waters of abstraction to avoid contact with the ground of actual political change (for example: what has happened in the US since the 1970s). The result is a kind of political cabotage, a critique of existing society that clings nervously to its shores. Readers of Rawls might well ask: where is the actual justice in the United States that corresponds to the ideal construct he offers us, if it is based on ‘plain truths widely accepted by citizens’?”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 4. "Designing Consensus, John Rawls" (1994), p. 108-9

Truth, World, Justice, Water

“The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that, in the end, life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Writing for the court, Spano v. New York 360 U.S. 321 (1959)
1950s

Life, Law, Feeling

“The main reason I became vegan was the book "." It basically changed my life. After the 2007 season I had read so much I decided to become a vegan and get rid of all the animal products -- meat and dairy. At first, it was basically just for the health benefits -- I was intrigued by the 2005 season when I cut a lot of that stuff out and got a lot better. It really changed my career, and I thought, "This might be something that helps me take my career to the next level." And it wasn't the main reason, but I like knowing everything I eat was served in a humane way.”

Pat Neshek (1980) American baseball player

"Pat Neshek: Willing to take the heat for his vegan diet" https://web.archive.org/web/20090521074430/http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/44920792.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ, interview with StarTribune.com (May 17, 2009).

Life, Health, Books, Way

“I'm showing an interest in your work. I thought you liked me showing an interest in your work. My showing. Save the gerund and screw the whale.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Max, Act I, scene I
The Real Thing (1982)

“Why have some people produced Confucian and Anglo-Protestant ethics—with their mutual emphasis on graft and delayed gratification—while others have midwived Islamic and animistic values, emphasizing conformity, consensus, and control? Why have certain patterns of thought and action come to typify certain people in the first place? Such an investigation political correctness prohibits.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa
2010s, Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa (2011)

People

“I believe that the human race has developed a form of collective schizophrenia in which we are not only the slaves to this imposed thought behavior, but we are also the police force of it. The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: Leading Edge Newspaper, July/August 1996

People, Fear, Family, Behavior

“The Age of Writing has passed. We must invent a new metaphor, restructure our thoughts and feelings.”

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

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 14

Age, Feeling

“Since its Parmenidean organization, ontology has built the portico of its ruined temple out of the following experience: what presents itself is essentially multiple; what presents itself is essentially one. The reciprocity of the one and being is certainly the inaugural axiom of philosophy - Leibniz formulation is excellent; 'What is not a being is not a being - yet it is also its impasse; an impasse in which the revolving doors of Plato's Parmenides introduce us to the singular joy of never seeing the moment of conclusion arrive. For if being is one, then one must posit that what is not one, the multiple, is not. But this is unacceptable for thought because what is presented is multiple and one cannot see how there could be an access to being outside all presentation. If presentation is not, does it still make sense to designate what presents (itself) as being? On the other hand, if presentation is, then the multiple necessarily is.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Meditation One: The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology
Being and Event (1988)

Sense, Joy

“Ah! as you say, we should slip over many thoughts and act as though we did not perceive them.”

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (1626–1696) French noble

Ah! comme vous dites, il faut glisser sur bien des pensées, et ne faire pas semblant de les voir.
Lettres, 70.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

“The Scotch are too cautious to be witty — they take thought beforehand of their answers; they are not people of impulse, and wit is an impulse. "It springs spontaneous if it spring." But then they have humour, rich, racy, sly humour, full of national character, and nearly allied to pathos.”

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

Literary Remains

People, Spring

“The papers were always talking about the debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid. But that doesn't speak to the imagination. What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

The Stranger (1942)

Hope, Imagination, Freedom, Chance

“In practice, the writer or scholar who aspires to that public position which defines intellectuals and distinguishes them from mere scribblers has always had to choose between being the apologist for rulers or an advisor to the people; the tragedy of the twentieth century is that these two functions have ceased to exist independently of one another, and intellectuals like Sartre who thought they were fulfilling one role were inevitably drawn to play both. If their successors, in France or elsewhere, are truly to put this past behind them, it will not be enough to recognize past mistakes. It will also be necessary to accept that entailed in the very meaning for modern society of the term intellectual are a number of roles that writers and scholars today may no longer wish to fulfill; indeed, a refusal to occupy the post of the (engaged) intellectual may be the most positive of the steps modern thinkers can take in any serious effort to come to terms with their own responsibility for our common recent past.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Source: Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 (1992), p. 319

People, Effort, Past

“Virginia Woolf thought one of the pleasures of reading contemporary novels was that they forced you to exercise your judgment. There was no received opinion about a book. You had to decide for yourself whether it was good.”

Tim Parks (1954) British writer

"Why Read New Books?" The New York Review of Books (11 November 2014).

Pleasure, Books, Exercises, Reading

“Her body and her mind were sluggish and lazy, and deep down she fought a tired envy of the people who, so she thought, experienced good things while she went through life a gray cloud in a gray room. Having few actual perceptions, she lived by rules. Education is good. Self-control is necessary. Everything in its time and place. Travel is broadening. And it was this last axiom which had forced her finally on the vacation to Mexico.”

John Steinbeck book The Wayward Bus

About Bernice Pritchard in Ch. 5
The Wayward Bus (1947)

Life, People, Education, Travel

“An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“I would confront the thieves, I thought, and the self-evident justice of my case would cause them to crumble before me. I don't know why I expected such extravagant results from the application of mere justice. That kind of calculation is seldom borne out by worldly events.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 217

Justice

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

Ronald David Laing (1927–1989) Scottish psychiatrist and author

Attributed to R.D. Lang in: Jack Lee Seymour, Margaret Ann Crain, Joseph V. Crockett (1993) Educating Christians. p. 53

Thinking, Change

“I thought about it for a moment. I hated wetbacks, and was tired of their culture being shoved down my throat in L. A., where I lived. I mean, really, how would Mexico feel if Americans illegally lived in their country and then insisted on celebrating the Fourth of July? I looked at Candy and the goods she would offer me if I played along. “All right! First round on me!””

Bethany Kennedy Scanlon (1975)

"Michael Collins", in Searching for Liberty, Grace and Destiny (2007)

Hate, Feeling, Country

“I was once interviewed in Italy and the headline of the interview the next day was wonderful. I saved this for my collection it was… "YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots" and I thought that's exactly right. Yes we have a soul, but it's mechanical. But it's still a soul, it still does the work that the soul was supposed to do. It is the seat of reason. It is the seat of moral responsibility. It's why we are appropriate objects of punishment when we do evil things, why we deserve the praise when we do good things. It's just not a mysterious lump of wonder stuff… that will out live us.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

"Atheism Tapes, part 6", BBC TV documentation of Jonathan Miller, produced by Richard Denton, recorded 2003, broadcast 2004

Soul, Evil

“By Thy perfect Intelligence, O Mazda
Thou didst first create us having bodies and spiritual consciences,
And by Thy Thought gave our selves the power of thought, word, and deed.
Thus leaving us free to choose our faith at our own will.”

Zoroaster Persian prophet and founder of Zoroastrianism

Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 31, 11.
The Gathas

Faith, Intelligence, Perfection

“As thoughts possess the fashion of the mood”

Henry Abbey Faciebat

Faciebat

Fashion, Mood

“I think that making a statement whether China is friend or foe we have to be careful not to label all Chinese but in terms of the government I think that there is a very carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over America. I think that China, the Chinese government is definitely a foe and one example is that China is taking American soil right now.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

2006 Delaware US Senate race

Thinking

“None but right acts can follow right thoughts; none but a right life can follow right acts; and by living a right life all blessedness is achieved.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

Morning and Evening Thoughts

Life

“Reporter: Welcome to Southampton Football Club. Do you think you are the right man to turn things around?
Strachan: No. I was asked if I thought I was the right man for the job and I said, "No, I think they should have got George Graham because I'm useless."”

Gordon Strachan (1957) Scottish footballer and manager

Metro Article http://www.metro.co.uk/sport/football/756336-gordon-strachans-greatest-quotes 22nd October, 2009

Thinking, Football

“So we went to see Babe Ruth pitch the last game of the 1933 season. The Senators had already clinched the pennant, the Giants had clinched in the other league, so this was just a nothing game. I thought maybe he’d make an appearance, pitch an inning or two or three – he pitched a complete game. He hadn’t pitched a complete game since 1930, and then he pitched a complete game. And before that he had pitched two four-inning stints for the Yankees, so he pitched four times. So he pitched a complete game, he gave up twelve hits, it was not a great pitching performance, but the Yankees won, 7-5. He didn’t strike out a soul. Years later I saw him on Broadway. I went up to him and said, “Hi, Babe.” He said, “Hi, kid.” That’s the way he treated everybody. I said, “You know, I saw you pitch your last game at the Stadium.” This was maybe eight years later or so. I said, “How come you didn’t strike out anybody?” And he said, “I wanted those other eight guys to earn their money!””

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

And that was Ruth. As quoted in "Bronx Banter Interview: Arnold Hano, Part I" http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/2009/09/25/bronx-banter-interview-arnold-hano/ Sports-related

Money, Way, Guy, Soul

“I came to Paris with all my ideas of art fixed, and I have never found it necessary to change them. I have been more or less in love with this master, or that method in art, but I have not modified any fundamental opinions. You have seen my first drawing, made at home without a master, without a model, without a guide. I have never done anything different since. You have never seen me paint except in a low tone; demi-teinte [half-tone] is necessary to me in order to sharpen my eyes and clear my thoughts, - it has been my best teacher.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Millet is describing his development as artist to his friend and later biographer fr:Alfred_Sensier
Source: Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter, 1881, p. 44

Love, Art, Home, Idea

“In the United States, the slightest infusion of Teutonic blood is thought to be sufficient to account for any considerable degree of intelligence found under any possible color of the skin.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Self-Made Men (1872)

Color, Intelligence

“I think that when friendship and perception of kinship ruled everything, no one killed any creature, because people thought the other animals were related to them.”

Porphyry (philosopher) (233–301) Neoplatonist philosopher

2, 22, 1
On Abstinence from Killing Animals

Friendship, People, Thinking, Animals

“Translation:
Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.”

Eligius Franz Joseph von Münch-Bellinghausen

Zwei Seelen und ein Gedanke,
Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag.
Der Sohn der Wildnis (1842), Act ii (published in English as Ingomar the Barbarian; translation by Maria Lovell), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspir’d", Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, Book xvi, line 267.; "’T was then we luvit ilk ither weel, ’T was then we twa did part: Sweet time—sad time! twa bairns at scule— Twa bairns and but ae heart", William Motherwell, Jeannie Morrison (c. 1832), Stanza 3.

Soul, Heart

“I think of myself as an American artist: I like it here... I feel I represent the U. S. in my art but I'm not a social critic. I just paint those things in my paintings because those things are the things I know best. I'm not trying to criticize the U. S. in any way, not trying to show up any ugliness at all. I'm just a pure artist, I guess. But I can't say if I take myself seriously as an artist. I just hadn't thought about it. I don't know how they consider me in print, though.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Quote of Warhol in Andy, My true Story 3, Gretchen Berg, Los Angeles Free Press (17 March 1967); as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467
1963 - 1967

Art, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from kitchen tables to nonprofit organizations to corporate boards, Americans are turning away from the politics of bickering and division and working on a new politics – a politics of creative problem solving. It would have us take the best from the political left and right, and come up with something new that serves us all. It would have us come up with solutions to public issues that are thoughtful enough, clever enough, and inclusive enough, to bring people and factions together.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 1, "A Creative and Practical Politics," p. 3.

People, Problem

“The energies of our system will decay; the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

The Foundations of Belief (1895).

Solitude, Sun

“When you endeavor to perfect every department of that form—physically, mentally, spiritually—then you are fulfilling the laws of true religion. Can a soul perfect itself in every department, when the physical form is groaning under disease, and continually decaying in consequence of the endeavor to crucify it? Never. The soul must spring forth spontaneously, and the form must be subservient to the slightest thought and feeling of the soul.”

Cora L. V. Scott (1840–1923) American spiritualist, writer

“The Religion of Life” (1858)

Disease, Religion, Law, Feeling

“The fact that arithmetic and geometry took such a notable step forward… was due in no small measure to the introduction of Egyptian papyrus into Greece. This event occurred about 650 B. C., and the invention of printing in the 15th century did not more surely effect a revolution in thought than did this introduction of writing material on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea just before the time of Thales.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1

Time, Sea

“He'd threatened me so many times. I thought he was so crazy he could hire a hit man to come get me anytime.”

Margaret Keane (1927) American artist

2014, Cited by Jesse Hamlin

Time

“"So computers are tools of the devil?" thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him.”

Neil Gaiman book Good Omens

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (1990) -->

Problem

“The man is a humbug — a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull…”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Diary entry regarding Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, (July 1924), published in Letters (1966), p. 97

World, Angels

“What are their thoughts to you or me, so long as we are satisfied with ourselves — and each other.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XII : A Tête-à-tête and a Discovery; Gilbert to Helen

“In our thought of Empire to-day there is nothing in the nature of flag-wagging or boasting of painting the map red. No! Only a sense of pride in the race from which we spring—a pride which makes us humble in our own eyes, and resolute to make ourselves as worthy as we may of the heritage and responsibilities which are ours.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast from 10 Downing Street, London (24 May 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 60.
1927

Spring, Nature, Sense, Painting

“You cannot extend the mastery of government over the daily life of a people without somewhere making it master of people's souls and thoughts.… Every step in that direction poisons the very roots of liberalism. It poisons political equality, free speech, free press, and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to more liberty but to less liberty.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Campaign speech at Madison Square Garden (31 October 1932)

Life, People, Soul

“The network called up and said 'We piggybacked you on the deal for another show,' I'm like 'Okay, so what you're saying to my writers is that they weren't picked up when they thought they were and now that they are it was because of something that has nothing to do with them. Okay. Great. Stop calling.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Underground Online, interview by Michael Patrick Sullivan
This is in reference to the WB network announcing that Angel had been confirmed for a full fifth season of 22 episodes, when Mutant Enemy Productions had already assumed that to be so.

“Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought.”

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)

“So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Original text: J'ai tant de sentiments et d'idées qui me sont communes avec les Anglais, que l'Angleterre est devenue pour moi une seconde patrie intellectuelle.
Voyages en Angleterre et en Irlande (Journeys to England and Ireland), 1835.
1830s

Feeling

“Be brief, be pointed, let your matter stand
Lucid in order, solid and at hand;
Spend not your words on trifles but condense;
Strike with the mass of thought, not drops of sense;
Press to close with vigor, once begun,
And leave, (how hard the task!) leave off, when done.”

Joseph Story (1779–1845) US Supreme Court justice

"Advice to a Young Lawyer", The American jurist and law magazine: Volume 5 (1831), p. 298.

Sense

“Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad.”

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

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter IX, The Price, p. 106

“And in the midst of that calling, God then called me to run for the United States Congress. And I thought, "What in the world would that be for?" And my husband said, "You need to do this." And I wasn't so sure. And we took three days, and we fasted and we prayed. And we said "Lord, is this what you want, are you sure? Is this your will?" And after, along about the afternoon of day two, He made that calling sure.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

at Living Word Christian Center, 2006-10-14, quoted in
2010s

God, World

“Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 33, Rainy-Day Laundry, Car Rental, Bob Dylan

Life, Time, Waiting, Reading

“The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skits, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list — yes, even the short skirts and the dancing — are worth dying for? The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002

Love, Life, Women, War

“A growing belief that behind every event lay intention—be it an evil thought in the mind of another, or the benevolent whim of a god in the sky—was perhaps inevitable in creatures with an innate understanding of causality. If you were smart enough to make multicomponent tools, you eventually came to believe in gods, the end of all causal chains. There would be costs, of course. In the future, to serve their new gods and shamans, the people would have to sacrifice much: time, wealth, even the right to have children. Sometimes they would even have to lay down their lives. But the payback was that they no longer had to be afraid of dying.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section IV (pp. 370-371)

God, Children, People, Understanding

“Good morning, Mr. Greenspan. I understand that you did not take my friendly advice last fall. I thought maybe you should look for other employment, but I see you have kept your job.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Financial Services, February 17, 2000 http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/bank/hba62930.000/hba62930_0.HTM#53 2000s, 2001-2005

Understanding

Quotes about thought page 52

Quotes about thought
page 52