Quotes about thought
page 64

“The Prince then remembered the white-haired Theel in the Castle of Bone, who had also been kind, if a little odd, and he wondered why such nice creatures always seemed to live in bad places with wicked things going on all around them.
“That’s easy,” said the girl, seeming to read his thoughts as the other Theel had done. “The bad places are where we can do the most good.””

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Prince on a White Horse (1982), Chapter 8 “The Tower of the Purple Knight” (pp. 231-232)

Girl, Reading

“Superior forms of thought have a fatal tendency of later becoming revealed law: and all philosophy ends, in its last stages, by becoming religion.”

José Maria Eça de Queiroz book Cartas de Inglaterra

As formas superiores do pensamento tem uma tendência fatal a tornar-se na futura lei revelada: e toda a filosofia termina, nos seus velhos dias, por ser religião.
"Israelismo"; "Israelism" p. 50.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)

Religion, Law

“[Brandeis] did not believe with the evangelist that... truth could be found by abiding in the Word or in becoming the disciple of any leader. Neither did he think it came from intuition or from speculation in metaphysics. He thought it could and would come only from the relentless, disinterested and critical study of facts.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Henry J. Friendly, Mr. Justice Brandeis: The Quest for Reason, 108 U. Pa. L. Rev. 985, 999 (1960).

Truth, Thinking, Study

“After all, we're a brain embedded in this larger set of structures. You can call it culture, call it society, call it your family, call it your friend, call it whatever it is. It's the stuff that makes people sign onto their Facebook a thousand times a day. It's the reason Twitter exists. We have got all these systems now that really make us fully aware of just how important social interactions are to what it is to be human. The question is, how can we study that? Because that, in essence, is a huge part of what's actually driving these enzymatic pathways in your brain. What's triggering these synaptic transmissions and these squirts of neurotransmitter back and forth is thoughts of other people, what other people say to us, interacting with the world at large.”

Jonah Lehrer (1981) American science writer

Chimeras of Experience: A Conversation with Jonah Lehrer (2009)

People, World, Family, Question

“All the other animals in the forest naturally expect me to be brave, for the Lion is everywhere thought to be the King of Beasts. I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way. Whenever I've met a man I've been awfully scared; but I just roared at him, and he has always run away as fast as he could go. If the elephants and the tigers and the bears had ever tried to fight me, I should have run myself — I'm such a coward; but just as soon as they hear me roar they all try to get away from me, and of course I let them go.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Way, Nature, Learning, Animals

“It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.”

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

The Great Infidels (1881)

Men, World, Chance

“I squint down at my feet and see that my metal plate is surrounded by blue waves that lap up over my boots. Slowly I raise my eyes and take in the water spreading out in every direction.
I can only form one clear thought.
This is no place for a girl on fire.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss, p. 263
The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Girl, Water

“Reincarnation is but a part of this probability system, the part that falls within your particular universe. There are also root dreams shared by the race as a whole. Most of these are not as symbolic as Jung thought them to be but are literal interpretations of the abilities used by the inner self. For that matter, as you know, flying dreams need not be symbolic of anything. They can be valid experiences, though often intermixed with other dream elements.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 309-310, quoting from Session 282

Dreams, Universe, Parting, Flying

“No original Gauguins were to be seen in Australia, for post-impressionism was officially thought to be the vulgar effusion of five-thumbed lunatics.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Source: Donald Friend (1965), p. 24

“The State, agent and slave of the Church, has so long united with it in suppression of woman’s intelligence, has so long preached of power to man alone, that it has created an inherited tendency, an inborn line of thought toward repression.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 543 as quoted in K. M. Talreja, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible: A Comparative Study https://books.google.com/books?id=9qkoAAAAYAAJ, New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan, 2000

Intelligence

“Today's biggest headlines are stories about people who thought they were doing something that was secret: Jesse Jackson's secret girlfriend and child, Monica Lewinski's private meetings with the president and confidential girl talk with Linda Tripp. Just think of the news stories we've watched on television…”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Letters from Home, Regal Books, March 2003, p. 14, ISBN 0830730583]

People, Secret, Girl, Thinking

“A beautifully constructed borsch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought.”

Saki book Beasts and Super-Beasts

"The Blind Spot"
Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914)

“Dr. Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children."”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), p. 213.
Criticism

Women, Men, Children, Age

“In mysticism, everything is thrown at us directly, without discursiveness and ratiocination, as if it were a matter of course, and we are challenged to follow an unrestrainable will to love, arising out of a tremendously agitated, indiscriminate feeling. … Mystics will—rather than know—their thoughts. … Mysticism witnesses nothing but love; mysticism is nothing but love. … Art shows how it loves, philosophy what it loves; mysticism knows only that it loves.”

Constantin Brunner (1862–1937) German philosopher

Our Christ : The Revolt of the Mystical Genius (1921)

Love, Art, Feeling

“I think of the whole of the city, the people who inhabit its halls, who sleep now and breathe its recycled air and whose activities by day animate this strip of land on the rim of the desert, and I remember — because this thought is always a memory — that they will all one day be gone, that everyone of them will be taken outside and pushed into the sand, that in a hundred years, or two hundred years, to be certain, every human being here, every lover and loser, every captain of industry and every hotel cleaner, every mother and father and every child will be no more and that these buildings will stand, not all of them, but enough will persevere without them. Its a thought that stills me, that brings a moment of calm. And I walk and walk, and amid the concrete, steel and glass, under lights burning brighter than the noonday sun, it is the knot of anxiety, always tightening and turning, for which, above all else, I resent her.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

People, Lovers, Thinking, Sleep

“I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

The Education of Women (1719)

Women, World, Education, Sex

“Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic.
Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Barks and Purrs

Love, Dogs, Forgiveness

“I see you don't understand, and I must explain it to you. Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there was a city — a city of people, you know. Here, where we are standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever.'
'But what has become of them all?' asked the Mole.
'Who can tell?' said the Badger. 'People come — they stay for a while, they flourish, they build — and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I've been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 4

People, Way, Understanding, Business

“Hayek’s essential political philosophy was that liberty is the supremacy of law. To some, this may appear a paradoxical conception of liberty, for liberty is too often considered to be the absence of law. This, however, was the exact opposite of Hayek’s view. He thought that liberty is not possible without law. Right law is liberty.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Law, Appearance

“Take a moment to remember the times on your own spiritual quest when you felt most enthusiastic. We want to pinpoint the times in which we felt more God conscious and devotional than ever before. Conversely, look at the times when you felt unenthused and do a similar analysis. These questions might help stimulate your thought process: Are you enthusiastic about your existence as a servant of the Lord? Are you enthusiastic to follow the basic principles that will help elevate your consciousness? Are you enthusiastic in the association of saintly people? Are you enthusiastic about what you can experience in your purest state? We must examine our spiritual life on a daily, weekly, and even yearly basis. This examination will help us recognize how various activities and thoughts affect us. We should note how the quality of our experiences varies according to our absorption in the process of bhakti.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior V: Making the Mind Your Best Friend (Hari-Nama Press, 2003), Chapter 4 - The Necessity of Enthusiasm

Life, God, People, Question

“If thou wouldst have humanity advance, buffet all preconceived ideas. Thought thus smitten awakes and becomes creative. Otherwise it rests in a mechanical repetition and mistakes that for its right activity.”

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

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Idea

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

February 18, 2009. Remarks at the Department of Justice African American History Month Program. http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090218.html 2000s

Way, Feeling, History, Understanding

“Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, Truth, Democracy, Freedom

“We figure to ourselves
The thing we like; and then we build it up,
As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,—
For thought is tired of wandering o’er the world,
And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Act I, sc. 5.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)

World, Chance

“Politics is ultimately subservient to the interests of the nation. If we give up all thoughts of a nation’s basic identity, history, culture and traditions, of what use is that politics?”

Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916–1968) RSS thinker and co-founder of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh

Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

History

“I feel like this is the beginning,
Though I've loved you for a million years,
And if I thought our love was ending,
I'd find myself drowning in my own tears.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

You Are The Sunshine of My Life
Song lyrics, Talking Book (1972)

Love, Feeling, Tear

“And what else did John have in mind but what is virtuous, so that he could not endure a wicked union even in the king's case, saying: "It is not lawful for thee to have her to wife." He could have been silent, had he not thought it unseemly for himself not to speak the truth for fear of death, or to make the prophetic office yield to the king, or to indulge in flattery. He knew well that he would die as he was against the king, but he preferred virtue to safety. Yet what is more expedient than the suffering which brought glory to the saint.”
Quid autem aliud Ioannes nisi honestatem consideravit? ut inhonestas nuptias etiam in rege non posset perpeti, dicens: Non licet tibi illam uxorem habere. Potuit tacere, nisi indecorum sibi iudicasset mortis metu verum non dicere, inclinare regi propheticam auctoritatem, adulationem subtexere. Sciebat utique moriturum se esse, quia regi adversabatur: sed honestatem saluti praetulit. Et tamen quid utilius quam quod passionis viro sancto advexit gloriam?

Ambrose (339–397) bishop of Milan; one of the four original doctors of the Church

De officiis ministrorum ("On the Offices of Ministers" or, "On the Duties of the Clergy"), Book III, chapter XIV, part 89 as quoted in www.ewtn.com http://www.ewtn.com/library/PATRISTC/PII10-2.HTM

Death, Truth, Fear, Law

“… I had some suggestions [about fencing]. I thought that you could encourage surprise attacks. I thought that would be very good. I kind of liked the idea of arming one guy with a conventional sword but giving the other a pikestaff. My favourite was the idea of blindfolding one of the competitors or blindfolding them both and spinning them around a bit so they were a little bit unstable and then just pushing them towards each other. It would make each match go on a bit longer.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

Guy, Idea

“I loathe Meryl Streep. She was good in Silkwood, but she began to take herself very seriously. I'm reacting to the horrendous overpraise she has received. She is a calculated actress, a victim of her own WASP culture. I find her totally unconvincing. She has no passion. She has no deep elemental vibration. Jodie Foster is overpraised, too. I thought she was good in The Silence of the Lambs, and The Accused, but she's getting on my nerves.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Silence, Passion

“We made for him a great dinner of honor. At this dinner I said to him, for the last time, I thought, "Goodbye, dear friend, topic of my life, now we part." And to myself I said further: Finished. This is your lonesome bed. A lady what they call fat and fifty. You made it personally. From this lonesome bed you will finally fall to a bed not so lonesome, only crowded with a million bones.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"Goodbye and Good Luck" (1959)

Life, Time, Parting, Personality

“Often your utterances and expressions of your face leak out the secrets of your hidden thoughts.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Secret

“Of what value is the study of management?
The study of management has been omitted from the student's training until comparatively recently, for a very different reason than was psychology. It was never doubted that a knowledge of management would be of great value to anyone and everyone, and many were the queer schemes for obtaining that knowledge after graduation. It was doubted that management could be studied otherwise than by observation and practice. Few teachers, if any, believed in the existence, or possibility, of a teaching science of management. Management was assumed by many to be an art, by even more it was thought to be a divinely bestowed gift or talent, rather than an acquired accomplishment. It was common belief that one could learn to manage only by going out on the work and watching other managers, or by trying to manage, and not by studying about management in a class room or in a text book; that watching a good manager might help one, but no one could hope really to succeed who had not " the knack born in him."”

Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) American psychologist and industrial engineer

Source: Psychology of management, 1914, p. 2-3

Books, Hope, Art, Knowledge

“The Mahomedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own; Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn, but they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of gnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta…. I have, however, mentioned [in The Foundations of Indian Culture] that Islamic culture contributed the Indo-Saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always semi-barbaric.”

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

September 12, 1923
India's Rebirth

World, School, Religion, Art

““The politics of reality,” Shevek repeated. He looked at Oiie and said, “That is a curious phrase for a physicist to use.”
“Not at all. The politician and the physicist both deal with things as they are, with real forces, the basic laws of the world.”
“You put your petty miserable ‘laws’ to protect wealth, your ‘forces’ of guns and bombs, in the same sentence with the law of entropy and the force of gravity? I had thought better of your mind, Demaere!””

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (p. 203)

World, Law, Reality, Wealth

“President Reagan brought us to the ultimate: America As Total Television. During his governance the printed word simply ceased to matter. White House dynamos had once telephoned newspapers to complain about unfair reporting. Not anymore. Now they telephoned network bosses. Even then it wasn't poor reporting they complained about, but poor pictures.
A network reporter who thought her report on shortcomings in Reaganland would anger the President's cadres was amazed when the man in charge of propaganda thanked her for doing them a good turn. But, she said, that was a tough piece of reporting.
Oh, the words may have been, said the gentleman, but on television words didn't matter. What mattered were pictures. And the pictures had been wonderful.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"'Star Wars' Mania" (p.346)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

Housing, Anger

“UNICEF does amazing work. I thought I was a worldly person, and then I started working with them and realized I don’t know as much of my world as I need to. And if I don’t know as much about my world as I need to, then many, many, many people don’t. So I’m thrilled to be in a position to be able to talk about it. And so I’m gonna.
—'FLY (online) magazine, November, 2005 issue”

Clay Aiken (1978) singer-songwriter, actor, record producer

On Charity

People, World, Personality

“Give a kind word (with a kindly thought behind the word) — you will be kind and receive kind words.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Be Generous!

“The process that we go through in recording with Tool is very organic, but at the same time it is very thought out. There is a very left-brain process of dissecting what we're doing and drawing from source material; it's very research oriented and esoteric.”

Maynard James Keenan (1964) musician

Neil Strauss (March 29, 2000) "A brain comes full circle: Rock musician Maynard James Keenan, of the bands Tool and A Perfect Circle", The New York Times, p. B3.

Time, Drawing

“In everything well known something worthy of thought still lurks.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. xxxix

“We’re the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody’s afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

Way

“When the time came for Pompadour herself to die, she confessed, was given her viaticum, and was from that time forth forbidden to see her lover. And when her body was borne away from Versailles, Louis was thought to have behaved rather badly because he watched the sad procession from a balcony. Let no one suppose that these people lived lives that were any more free from religious and neighbourly censure than the adulterers in our smallest Canadian villages. Even wealth and privilege could not wholly insulate them from that frost.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Madame de Pompadour (1954).

People, Sadness, Lovers, Time

“A chance remark by Ardini, an Italian master carver whom I met there [in Rome], that 'marble changes colour under different people's hands' made me decide immediately that it was not dominance which one had to attain over material, but an understanding, almost a kind of persuasion, and above all greater co-ordination between head and hand. This thought has recurred again and again ever since - and has developed my greatest interests; the reason why people both move differently and stand differently in direct response to changed surroundings; the unconscious grouping of people when they are working together, producing a spatial movement which approximates to the structure of spirals in shells or rhythms in crystal structure; the meaning of the spaces between forms, or the shape of the displacement of forms in space, which in themselves have a most precise significance. All these responses spring from a factual and tactile approach to the object.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Extract from Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, (from Chapter 1: The excitement of discovering the nature of carving, 1903-1930), with an introduction by Herbert Read, London, 1952
1947 - 1960

People, Spring, Understanding, Change

“Now, the most eloquent irreligious individual voice in Nigeria is our first Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Soyinka is an eminent literary scholar. He has consistently argued for tolerance and respect for the humanity of all in the face of religious intolerance and extremism. Soyinka has not minced words in condemning the unconscionable religious gladiators in the region that have often turned the country into a theatre of absurdity and holy wars. He has been consistent in his condemnation of the jihadists and crusaders who often orchestrate religious bloodletting in their quest to implement Sharia law or to further some self-styled divine mandate. While I cannot say for sure how impactful his rational appeals are on policies and programs, Soyinka’s statements are sources of hope and light at times of darkness and despair. I can say for certain that on occasions when religious extremists push the nation to the brink. When religion blinds and people are unable to see or think clearly, when fear and fanaticism loom very large, Soyinka is a voice of rational sanity, thoughtful courage, and moderation.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

War, People, Fear, Religion

“The biblical case for vegetarianism does not rest on the view that killing may never be allowable in the eyes of God, rather on the view that killing is always a grave matter. When we have to kill to live we may do so, but when we do not, we should live otherwise. It is vital to appreciate the force of this argument. In past ages many – including undoubtedly the biblical writers themselves – have thought that killing for food was essential in order to live. But … we now know that – at least for those now living in the rich West – it is perfectly possible to sustain a healthy diet without any recourse to flesh products. … Those individuals who opt for vegetarianism can do so in the knowledge that they are living closer to the biblical ideal of peaceableness than their carnivorous contemporaries. The point should not be minimized. In many ways it is difficult to know how we can live more peaceably in a world striven by violence and greed and consumerism. Individuals often feel powerless in the face of great social forces beyond even democratic control. To opt for a vegetarian life-style is to take one practical step towards living in peace with the rest of creation. One step towards reducing the rate of institutionalized killing in the world today.”

Andrew Linzey (1952) British theologian and divine

Source: Animal Theology (1994), pp. 131-132

Life, God, Age, World

“He [Guru Parupalli Ramakrishna Pantulu gaaru] would take care of me. He focussed only on teaching me and never on performances. He never cared about popularity and wealth. However, I am not like that. I perform and give my listeners a tough time. They think this fellow is not good. He does not follow tradition. I provide them with food for talk and thought.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Source: Interview by Prince Rama Varma There's no one way to teach. http://hindu.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2006030400630400.htm&date=2006/03/04/&prd=mp&, The Hindu, 4 March 2006.

Food, Thinking, Time, Wealth

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism…We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new…The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? We can all of us recall, at any rate, one very memorable admission that the great system of Gladstonian finance had not reached perfection. That admission was made by no other person than Mr. Gladstone himself in his famous manifesto of 1874, when he promised the most extraordinary reduction of which our taxation is capable. Surely there is as much room for improvement in taxation as in every other work of fallible man, provided that we always cherish the just and sacred principle of taxation that it is equality of private sacrifice for public good. Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. Are to we assume that it has all been wrong? Is my right hon. friend going to propose its repeal or the repeal of any of it; or has all past interference been wise, and we have now come to the exact point where not another step can be taken without mischief? …other countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them…In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10.

People, School, History, Thinking

“The photo can insist on reviewing moments that were unseen, or not know they were seen but passed in viewing. John Cage said (I don't know if they were his own remarks or Zen) his goal was not to get somewhere; he just wanted to enjoy the trip. That's the quality I want in all of my work, that a specific goal or accomplishment would be allied to the fact. I noticed a long time age, when I went to a strange country, that I had the best time and the greatest experiences when I thought I was lost, because when you are lost you look so much harder.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1980's, I don't necessarily desire a perfect photography,' 1981

Age, Photo, Time, Country

“We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods — Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will — a good offense.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/pat_quotes/hindus.htm

Life, God

““Why would he marry a twelve-year-old?”
“He had a dream where God told him he was to repopulate the earth.”
“Of course he did,” the clarinet said. “Don’t they all have dreams like that?”
“Right, I always thought that was a prerequisite for being a prophet,” Sayid said.”

Emily St. John Mandel book Station Eleven

Source: Station Eleven (2014), Chapter 19 (p. 123)

God, Dreams

“There are no new stressful thoughts. They’re all recycled.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

“This is not what I thought physics was about when I started out: I learned that the idea is to explain nature in terms of clearly understood mathematical laws; but perhaps comparisons are the best we can hope for.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 22, Quantum Computing, Putting qubits to work, p. 203

Law, Hope, Mathematics, Idea

“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom. And for us at home - fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas - whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them - help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, Prayer on D-Day (1944)

Men, God, War, Children

“I paint ideas, not things. My intention is less to paint works that are pleasing to the eye than to suggest great thoughts which will speak to the imagination and the heart and will arouse all that is noblest and best in man.”

George Frederick Watts (1817–1904) British painter and sculptor

Unsourced

Imagination, Idea, Heart, Painting

“Dissidents should be paid 13 months' salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Source: 1990s, Against the Grain (1990), p. 172

People, Thinking

“By many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led:
But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead.
The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet
Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

God, Dreams, Hope, Dead

“On young love* "Here is a fulfillment of long centuries of civilization and culture; here, in romantic love, more than the triumph of thought or the victories of power is the topmost reach of human beings."”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), p.g. 8

Love, Victory

“The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

“Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

The judge
Blood Meridian (1985)

Law, Error, Dead

“I verily believe that the kingdom of God advances more on spoken words than it does on essays written and read; on words, that is, in which the present feeling and thought of the teaching mind break into natural and forceful expression.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 484.

God, Feeling, Nature, Reading

“Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

St. 2 1840s, Poems (1847), The Problem http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/problem.htm

“Last year, initially The Scotsman newspaper — being Scottish and J. K. Rowling being Scottish — and because of the English tendency to try and tear down their idols, they kept trying to build stories which said J. K. Rowling ripped off Neil Gaiman. They kept getting in touch with me and I kept declining to play because I thought it was silly. And then The Daily Mirror in England ran an article about that mad woman who was trying to sue J. K. Rowling over having stolen muggles from her. And they finished off with a line saying [something like]: And Neil Gaiman has accused her of stealing.
Luckily I found this online and I found it the night it came out by pure coincidence and the reporter's e-mail address was at the bottom of the thing so I fired off an e-mail saying: "This is not true, I never said this. You are making this up." I got an apologetic e-mail back, but by the time I'd gotten the apologetic e-mail back it was already in The Daily Mail the following morning and it was very obvious that The Daily Mail‘s research [had] consisted of reading The Daily Mirror. And you're going: journalists are so lazy.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

On stories which implied that Harry Potter was merely a revised Timothy Hunter of Gaiman's The Books of Magic, in January magazine interview (2002) http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/gaiman.html

Tear, Time, Reading, Madness

“As the reader is aware, at the cradle of our learning stood the philosophy of Asia Minor and Greece, itself influenced in turn by Indian and Oriental philosophical and religious conceptions. It is the tragedy of this philosophy that, although it was traditionally directed towards the undogmatic acquisition of wisdom and virtue, always regarding the freedom of human rational thought in visionary fashion as the highest good, it nevertheless inevitably led to a mental hardening of the arteries into coercive thought models.”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Source: Prognostics, 1971, p. 57. Chapter 4: Philosophical models of the future http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Polak%204.%20Philosophical%20Models.htm

Wisdom, Fashion, Freedom, Learning

“According to Seth, poor health is caused mainly by destructive mental feeling patterns that directly affect the body because of the particular range within the electromagnetic system in which they fall. Bad health, for example, does not happen first, resulting in unhealthy thoughts. It is the other way around.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 237-238

Health, Way, Feeling

“Holy Joe: And on the day of judgment everything will be replayed, even your thoughts”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Holy Joe http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0002/0002_01.asp" (2002)

“And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,
Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;
And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death
As she blew out her light.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Death, Dreams, Lovers, Light

“To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life—that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion—or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate… If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 26

Life, Fate, Way, Dependency

“Sitting here at Haidakhan, Mahaprabhuji has control over every particle of the Creation by the power of His mere wish, by His very thought. (…) Mahaprabhuji has control over the elements, the spiritual world - to say nothing of the world of men. He is the Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer of the world. Not a single blade of grass can grow but that He wills it. He has incarnated in a human body for the welfare of mankind. His sole desire - is to make it possible for the whole world to be liberated. He shall do His utmost to achieve liberation of the world.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Vishnu Dutt Shastriji about Mahaprabhuji
31 August 1983
The Teachings of Babaji

Men, World, Grass

“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment; that is, for the great majority of mankind."

Autobiography, Ch 5, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10378/10378-h/10378-h.htm#link2H_NOTE https://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/mill/auto/auto.c05.html source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 5: A Crisis in My Mental History (p. 100)

Happiness

“They say any artist paying six dollars may exhibit
Mr. Richard Mutt [= Duchamp himself; an inscription written by Duchamp] sent in a fountain. Without discussion this article disappeared and never was exhibited.
What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt fountain:
1. Some contented it was immoral, vulgar.
2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing.
Now, Mr. Mutt fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bit tube is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumber’s show windows.
Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made this fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that's its useful significance disappeared under the new title ['The Richard Mutt Case'] and point of view – created a new thought for that object.
As for plumbing, that is absurd. The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

quote, 1917
Quote in: Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist's writings, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 817
Duchamp's core quote / his own written comment on his artwork 'Fountain (Duchamp)': The Richard Mutt Case, Marcel Duchamp, ‘Blind Man’, New York, 1917: 5
1915 - 1925

Life, Art, Quotes

“He swore repeatedly, ever the more violently the unsteadier his legs became, but to steel his senses he kept his mind fixed persistently on the world-famous battles of the rhymes. He recited the most powerful passages one after another over and over again, dwelling especially on the devilish heroes, Grimur Ægir and Andri. It was Grimur he was fighting now, he thought... but now an end would be put to the deadly feud, for now the stage was set for the final struggle.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers

World, Sense, Fight

“The crusade is never off my mind — the exercise I do, the food I eat, the thought I think — all this and how I can help make my profession better-respected. To me, this one thing — physical culture and nutrition — is the salvation of America.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement, LosAngeles Times"

Food, Exercises, Thinking, Help

“After having my daughter, I made a conscious effort to regain control of my health and my body. But I didn't want to do a crash diet. I was a mom now. I needed to change my ways and set an example for my child. … A year later (around November 2013), my husband and I decided we wanted to try a completely plant-based diet … And so the journey began that helped me get into the best shape of my life. Little did I know the long-lasting effects it would have. I thought, like with most diets, I would feel deprived and hate food, that I would miss out on restaurants and celebrations, that I would get headaches and be irritable, etc. I was wrong about all of that. It took a few days to adjust, but what I discovered was increased energy, better sleep, weight loss, improved digestion, clarity, and an incredibly positive feeling for my actions and the effects it would have on those around me and the environment.”

Beyoncé (1981) American singer, songwriter and actress

Foreword https://books.google.it/books?id=KfeoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PP10 to Marco Borges's The 22-Day Revolution, New York: Penguin, 2015

Life, Hate, Health, Food

“If there be any thing in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33

Love, Parent

“Dialectical thought understands the critical tension between “is” and “ought” first as an ontological condition, pertaining to the structure of Being itself. However, the recognition of this state of Being — its theory — intends from the beginning a concrete practice. Seen in the light of a truth which appears in them falsified or denied, the given facts themselves appear false and negative.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

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

Truth, Understanding, Light, Appearance

“I have no secret thoughts… Or rather, they're not secret because I've withheld them — if they're unknown, it's because no one asked.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Secret

“Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 2, Production and Distribution, p. 39

Error, Success

“The problem is not merely that of the transformation of Christianity into a state religion but of the diffusion of this faith that has stopped being a faith and has become a collective ideology, a kind of manifestation of thought that collects all the commonplaces, the legends, the miracles, the “prophecies,” the apocalypses, the thaumaturgies, and formulates for the people a facile, moralistic, and constructive set of beliefs.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 40

People, Faith, Religion, Problem

“What I did was mild compared to what Durocher did to Conlan. I don't see how what I did can be called more serious than the Durocher incident. I had good reason to lose my head. That was the second time they call me out on a play I thought I had beat. That's enough to make anybody mad.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Fined, Suspended: Clemente Hit Hard By Giles" by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (June 8, 1963), p. 23
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1963</big>

Time, Madness

“She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.”

William Wordsworth The Sparrow's Nest

The Sparrow's Nest, st. 2 (1801).

Love, Fear, Tear, Heart

“It was her own evil assumptions that had done her in. She hadn’t even considered the third possible explanation for his strange behavior—that he was a perfectly nice man, without an ounce of guile, just trying to be helpful. People helped people in California. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She’d only been in New York a few weeks, and already she was turning hard and suspicious.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

Source: The Hidden Goddess (2011), Chapter 2, “An Unexpected Gift” (p. 33)

People, Behavior, Evil, Help

“O Banner!
Not houses of peace are you, nor any nor all of their prosperity; if need be you shall have every one of those houses to destroy them;
You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money;
May they stand fast then? Not an hour, unless you, above them and all, stand fast.”

Walt Whitman book Drum-Taps

Drum-Taps. Song of the Banner at Daybreak
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Money, Peace, Housing

“[T]he older I get the more I realise that the world is not as varied as we thought it was when we were young. Most places are much alike.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

World

“I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock.”

Dee Dee Ramone (1951–2002) German-American songwriter and musician

QuoteHD, Rap Quotes (2001) http://www.quotehd.com/quotes/words/Rap

Time

“Oh, it was a real shock when we saw the Creature. And you can see from the pictures in the book that I look a little awestruck, kind of taken aback when I saw it at first. I thought it was quite wonderful, extraordinary, and a little scary which of course is exactly what is was supposed to be.”

Julie Adams (1926–2019) American actress

WAMG Interview: Julie Adams – Star of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON https://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2012/03/wamg-interview-julie-adams-star-of-creature-from-the-black-lagoon/ (March 19, 2012)

Books

“Well, remember, all that area from which the Gore family comes was solid Democrat and progressive under Roosevelt for several decades. So they just didn't become Republicans because they all wanted to be bankers. They became it because they didn't like black people, and they thought the Democrats were pushing integration too fast. And that's how the great split came about, to the shame of the whole country.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

On the American South's switch from Democrat to Republican http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=342 2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

People, Family, Country

“The great gain would be freedom of thought. Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop. When they do this, when they come to truth through their investigations, when doubt leads them to discovery, the truth which they get will be theirs, and their minds will work on and on unfettered.”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 186.

Women, Men, Truth, Freedom

“I've had my share of pleasure and I've tasted pain
I never thought that I would touch an angel's wing
There's a journey in my eyes
It's getting hard for me to hide
Like the ocean at the sunrise.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Heavy on My Heart
Anastacia (2004)

Pain, Pleasure, Angels

“We are entitled to be disappointed, but not to be surprised, by the persistence of governmental intervention in economic life. A school of thought attributes great influence to public opinion in the movements toward or away from laissez-faire. Among the many members of this school one may mention Albert Venn Dicey, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman.”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

"The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency." 1988

Life, School, Disappointment

“Well I'm afraid it simply does, um, [the Catholic Church] does condemn [homosexuality], yes, it calls it a - the official word is disorder, but it was refined by the current Pontiff, Ratzinger, who called it a 'moral evil'. But on the other hand we must remember, as the point that was made is that the church is very loose on moral evils because, although they try to accuse people like me who believe in the empiricism and the enlightenment of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it's some appalling sin where what it actually means is thought, um, they um, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine… absolutely okay, and then they didn't, and what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says 'oh well we couldn't know better because nobody else did?”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

(To the affirmative team) Then what are you for?!
Answering a question during the Intelligence² debate: "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world", November 7th 2009
2000s

People, Evil

“When everyone clapped and told me they were impressed, I thought: 'I like this - I think I'll keep doing this”

Joseph McManners (1992) British singer, actor

EXCLUSIVE: RISE AND RISE OF THE SMALL BOY WITH THE BIG VOICE http://www.mirror.co.uk/archive/tm_method=full%26objectid=16521117%26siteid=89520-name_page.html at www.mirror.co.uk (accessed July 8, 2007) After singing at his family reunion:

Thinking

“I'm Christian Bale", Russel, says, taking [her hand].
"Oh right," she says. "Yeah, I thought I recognized you. You're the actor.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Glamorama

Glamorama (1998)

“My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know. She thought she had never loved him so much as at this moment, when she heard the convent door close, hard and final, and felt the wall shutting her in.”

Marion Zimmer Bradley book The Mists of Avalon

Gwenhwyfar
The Mists of Avalon (1983)

Love

“Nekhludoff recalled his relations with the wife of the district commander, and a flood of shameful recollections came upon him. “There is a disgusting bestiality in man,” he thought; “but when it is in a primitive state, one looks down upon and despises it, whether he is carried away with or withstands it. But when this same bestiality hides itself under a so-called aesthetic, poetic cover, and demands to be worshiped, then, deifying the beast, one gives himself up to it, without distinguishing between the good and the bad. Then it is horrible.””

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 73

“Madame de Staël thought it was pride in mankind to endeavour to penetrate the secret of the universe; and speaking of the higher metaphysics she said: "I prefer the Lord's Prayer to it all."”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Sketch of the Life, Character, and Writings of Baroness de Staël-Holstein (1820) by Albertine-Adrienne Necker de Saussure, p. 349; often misquoted as, "I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer."

Secret, Universe

“And like a passing thought, she fled
In light away.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

The Vision.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Light

“A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"The Superstitions of Fred Anneday, Annday, Anday; a Novel of Real Life" (1935)
How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings, vol.II (1974)

Dreams, Sleep, Change, Night