Quotes about thought
page 96

“Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 1

God , Time , Heart , World

“In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Tree , Sun , Beauty , Nature

“When I was young, it was not thought proper for young ladies to study very conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand. Young ladies (at least in provincial towns) were expected to sit down in the parlour to sew,—during which reading aloud was permitted,—or to practice their music; but so as to be fit to receive callers, without any signs of blue‐stockingism which could be reported abroad. Jane Austen herself, the Queen of novelists, the immortal creator of Anne Elliott, Mr. Knightly, and a score or two more of unrivalled intimate friends of the whole public, was compelled by the feelings of her family to cover up her manuscripts with a large piece of muslin work, kept on the table for the purpose, whenever any genteel people came in. So it was with other young ladies, for some time after Jane Austen was in her grave; and thus my first studies in philosophy were carried on with great care and reserve.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, vol. 1 [1855]

Family , Study , Time , Reading

“My friend, brag not yet of our American cousins! Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry and resources, I believe to be almost unspeakable; but I can by no means worship the like of these. What great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing that one could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there? None: the American cousins have yet done none of these things.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Soul

“He has a mild grave face; a thoughtful sternness, a sorrowful pity: but there is a terrible flash of anger in him too.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Anger

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

Fight , Love , Fear , Problem

“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Way , Art , Happiness

“The heroic virtue of these glorious representatives of the opinions with which I sympathized, deeply affected me, and I perpetually recurred to them as others do to a favourite poet, when needing to be carried up into the more elevated regions of feeling and thought.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Feeling

“There is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no youth of the age I then was, can be expected to be more than one thing, and this was the thing I happened to be. Ambition and desire of distinction, I had in abundance; and zeal for what I thought the good of mankind was my strongest sentiment, mixing with and colouring all others. But my zeal was as yet little else, at that period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions. It had not its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with mankind; though these qualities held their due place in my ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm for ideal nobleness.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Life , Youth , Age

“He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/49/mode/1up pp. 49-50

Personality , Sincerity , Evil , Motivation

“He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/48/mode/1up p. 48

Life , Personality , Education , Youth

“My father was as well aware as anyone that Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory. Such is the facility with which mankind believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the best conception they were able to form of perfect goodness.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/41/mode/1up pp. 41–42

Perfection , Time , Truth , Fear

“My state of mind was not humility, but neither was it arrogance. I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can do, so and so. I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly. I did not estimate myself at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was that I was rather backward in my studies, since I always found myself so, in comparison with what my father expected from me. I assert this with confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said. I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in an unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown persons, while I never had inculcated in me the usual respect for them. My father did not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from not being aware of it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be otherwise than extremely subdued and quiet in his presence.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/33/mode/1up pp. 33–34

Personality , Age , Study , Self-confidence

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

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

School , Family , Question , Children

“With a soldier the flag is paramount. I know the struggle with my conscience during the Mexican War. I have never altogether forgiven myself for going into that. I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign. I had taken an oath to serve eight years, unless sooner discharged, and I considered my supreme duty was to my flag. I had a horror of the Mexican War, and I have always believed that it was on our part most unjust. The wickedness was not in the way our soldiers conducted it, but in the conduct of our government in declaring war. The troops behaved well in Mexico, and the government acted handsomely about the peace. We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion. Once in Mexico, however, and the people, those who had property, were our friends. We could have held Mexico, and made it a permanent section of the Union with the consent of all classes whose consent was worth having. Overtures were made to Scott and Worth to remain in the country with their armies.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

On the Mexican–American War, p. 448 https://archive.org/details/aroundworldgrant02younuoft/page/n4
1870s, Around the World with General Grant (1879)

Courage , Peace , Time , Country

“The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was, raised an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen scrupulousness and warlike ferocity, which, in a people whom idleness resigned to their own thoughts, and who conversing only with each other, suffered no dilution of their zeal from the gradual influx of new opinions, was long transmitted in its full strength from the old to the young, but by trade and intercourse with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too fast to their laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which men, not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily shelter themselves from rigour and constraint.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

p. 8. https://books.google.com/books?id=-6JfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA8
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

Religion , Indifference , People , Suffering

“I once thought the greatest sin of war was violence. It isn't. The greatest sin is it requires good men to become practical.”

Pierce Brown book Dark Age

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 1: Till the Vale; Darrow

War , Men

“Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Our thoughts almost inevitably revolve around this desire; we simply recoil from entertaining ideas that are unpleasant or painful to us. We imagine we are looking for the truth, or being realistic, when in fact we are holding on to ideas that bring a release from tension and soothe our egos, make us feel superior. This pleasure principle in thinking is the source of all of our mental biases. If you believe that you are somehow immune to any of the following biases, it is simply an example of the pleasure principle in action. Instead, it is best to search and see how they continually operate inside you, as well as learn how to identify such irrationality in others.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 1 : Master Your Emotional Self
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Pain , Imagination , Search , Learning

“Most of us spend our lives avoiding the thought of death. Instead, the inevitability of death should be continually on our minds. Understanding the shortness of life fills us with a sense of purpose and urgency to realize our goals. Training ourselves to confront and accept this reality makes it easier to manage the inevitable setbacks, separations, and crises in life. It gives us a sense of proportion, of what really matters in this brief existence of ours. Most people continually look for ways to separate themselves from others and feel superior. Instead, we must see the mortality in everyone, how it equalizes and connects us all. By becoming deeply aware of our mortality, we intensify our experience of every aspect of life.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 18 : Meditate on Our Common Mortality
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Understanding , Death , People , Way

“A realistic definition of capitalism should not present it as a constant, created and characterized by unicentral thought and action. It is , in essence, the result of the actions of opportunist individuals and groups who established themselves into openings and cracks within society a the potential for surplus product developed; these actions became systemaised as they nibbled away at the surplus product.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, pp. 82

“If we keep considering certifications to be the validation for an individual's success, we will end up with no original thought.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Success

“Your spirit is an artist… It paints with thoughts.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Painting

“Every day in your lives, you are causing the expansion of yourself as well as the collective with your thought. And yet you still believe not in your perfection but instead in your unworthiness.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Perfection

“Because we have learned that our parents and other people cannot accept our emotions, thoughts and desires and we cannot tolerate them in that situation, we learn to disconnect from our personal truth as well. This includes disconnecting from our feelings so we don't feel them. This includes disconnecting from our thoughts so we aren't thinking them. It means disconnecting from our bodies so we don't feel our bodies and it involves disconnecting from our personal desires.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Personality , People , Learning , Truth

“To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. IV, l. 173
Endymion (1818)

Love , Making love

“There were so many times I thought, "I'll have the album finished this year, definitely, we'll get it out this year." Then there were a couple of years where I thought, "I'm never gonna do this."”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time… evaporates.
MOJO interview (2005)

Time

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared."”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.
1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Freedom , Making love , Past , Truth

“Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Happy family"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Family , Happiness , Making love

“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Writing for the court, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969)

Housing , Reading , Business , Books

“It would cause nothing but madness, Thomas thought. Men would fight for it, lie for it, cheat for it, betray for it, and die for it. The Church would make money from it, it would cause nothing but evil, he thought, for it stirred horror in men's hearts. So he would do what Planchard had said he would do. 'Hurl it into the deepest sea,' he quoted the old Abbott, 'down among the monsters, and tell no one.'”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

Money , Cheating , Making love , Heart

“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Light , Dreams , Help , Hope

“I, therefore, did learn a lesson: The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry. Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something. The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

address " What is Science? http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/what_is_science.html", presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966), published in The Physics Teacher, volume 7, issue 6 (1969), p. 313-320

Understanding , People , Learning , Communication

“When the spirit touches
man's heart and brow
with thoughts that are lofty, bold, serene,
so that with clear eyes he will face the world
as a free man may;
when the spirit gives birth to action
by which alone we stand or fall;
when from the sane and resolute action
rises the workd that gives a a man's life
content and meaning — then would that many,
lonely and actively working,
know of the spirit that grasps and befriends him...”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

World , Life , Birth , Heart

“I never thought I’d feel wind again. I never thought I’d be outside. It’s so beautiful.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Amos glanced around the ruins and shrugged. “That’s got a lot to do with context, I guess.”
Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 26 (p. 280)

Beauty , Feeling

“Everybody may have peace if they are willing to pay any price for it. Part of this any price is slavery, dishonor of your women, destruction of your homes, denial of your God. I have seen all of these abominations in other parts of the world paid as the price of not resisting invasion, and I have no thought that the inhabitants of this state of my birth have any desire for peace at that price, or that they lack the fortitude that is necessary to discourage aggression by the barbarians who are now about to be driven back to their kennels, or by any other savages who may arise at some later date against our civilized Christian world.”

William D. Leahy (1875–1959) United States admiral, ambassador to France, Chief of Staff

Commencement speech at Cornell College in Iowa on 5 June 1944, as quoted by Henry H. Adams in Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (1985), p. 246
1940s

Home , God , Peace , Women

“Nothing which consists of corporeal matter is absolutely light, but that is comparatively lighter which is rarer, either by its own nature, or by accidental heat. And it is not to be thought that light bodies are escaping to the surface of the universe while they are carried upwards, or that they are not attracted by the earth. They are attracted, but in a less degree, and so are driven outwards by the heavy bodies; which being done, they stop, and are kept by the earth in their own place.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

As translated and quoted by Bryant, ibid.
Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), Astronomia nova (1609)

Light , Universe , Nature

“After high school I wiped the dust off my shoes and thought, ‘I’m never going to let that happen to me again. I’m never going to be afraid again.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

School , Shoe

“Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.
The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On My Philosopy (1941)

Time , Dependency , Question , Past

“You think you know what I am, she thought, but all you’ve got is stories.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 21 (p. 222)

Thinking

“The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Attributed to Kepler in some sources (though more recent sources often attribute it to Euclid), such as Mathematically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations edited by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither (1998), p. 214 http://books.google.com/books?id=4abygoxLdwQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA214#v=onepage&q&f=false. The earliest publication located that attributes the quote to Kepler is the piece "The Mathematics of Elementary Chemistry" by Principal J. McIntosh of Fowler Union High School in California, which appeared in School Science and Mathematics, Volume VII ( 1907 http://books.google.com/books?id=kAEUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false), p. 383 http://books.google.com/books?id=kAEUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA383#v=onepage&q&f=false. Neither this nor any other source located gives a source in Kepler's writings, however, and in an earlier source, the 1888 Notes and Queries, Vol V., it is attributed on p. 165 http://books.google.com/books?id=0qYXAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA165#v=onepage&q&f=false to Plato. Expressions that relate geometry to the divine "mind of God" include comments in the Harmonices Mundi, e.g., "Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God", and "Since geometry is co-eternal with the divine mind before the birth of things, God himself served as his own model in creating the world".
Disputed quotes

God , Mathematics , Law , Nature

“I was merely thinking God's thoughts after Him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Google search of the second sentence, in quotes, yields a trio of 2019 books alone, most (there and in following) attributing it to Kepler—e.g., see Prof Basden's 2019 work, [Foundations and Practice of Research: Adventures with Dooyeweerd's Philosophy, The Complex Activity of Research [§10—4.1 Less-Obvious Pistic Functioning in Research], Advances in Research Methods, Abingdon-on-Thames, UK, Taylor & Francis-Routledge, 1st, 9781138720688, https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Practice-Research-Adventures-Dooyeweerds/dp/1138720682, February 25, 2020] (page 222).
While most citations of Kepler have been traced back to a translation of an original work, this quotation appears broadly without any such sourcing (e.g., Basden). Where it is sourced, the sources are either spurious (e.g., to the "New World Encyclopedia", a Paragon House/Unification Church product https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/02/arts/unification-church-is-starting-a-publishing-house.html, wherein it is likewise unsourced), or to such sources as Henry Morris' 1988 creationist work, [Men of Science, Men of God: Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible, Green Forest, AR, Master Books, 21st reprint, 9780890510803, https://www.amazon.com/Men-Science-God-Henry-Morris/dp/0890510806, February 25, 2020] (page 21f).
Until a scholarly source is found that ties these statements to an original text from Kepler, they formally must be considered unattributed to Kepler.
Disputed quotes

God , Thinking , Books , Nature

“About five years ago, somebody showed me some web sites that had my material all over them, and I thought that was fascinating. One reason was, I'd never seen my jokes written one right after another like that. I write on drawing paper—I don't even like lines on the paper—so I have notebooks all over the place with handwritten pieces of my act in them. So to see it go by, all typed out neatly, was like, "Wow."”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

And then two or three years ago, someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn't write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn't write any of it. What's disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I'm embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad.
[The Tenacity of the Cockroach: Conversations with Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders, Thompson, Steven, 2002, Three Rivers Press, 0609809911, September 9, 2012, http://www.avclub.com/articles/steven-wright,13796/]
Interviews

Drawing

“There is no more antagonism between growth and reproduction than between growth and thought, growth and muscular activity, growth and breathing.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 607
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

“Let us ask ourselves seriously and honestly, " What do I believe after all? What manner of man am I after all? What sort of show would I make after all, if the people around me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts?"”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

What sort of show then do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?

P. 276.
Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Secret , Making love , People , Heart

“How is it appropriate to feel? she thought. Only humans dread. Dread is appropriate to nothing. It’s the surplus of animal fear, it’s never indicated, it’s nothing but itself.”

China Miéville book Keep

Keep (p. 280)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

Animals , Fear , Feeling

“Certainly, Marx was atheist, "materialist", etc. But for a philosopher also, it's advisable to distinguish between what he is and what he thinks to be. The most important, this is not what Marx thought and that we ignore, but what think the texts he has written. What appears in them, in a way as obvious as exceptional in the history of philosophy, this is a metaphysics of the individual. Marx is one of the first Christian thinkers of Occident.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Marx II. Une philosophie de l’économie, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Nrf », 1976, p. 445
Books on Economy and Politics, Marx. A Philosophy of Human Being (1976)
Original: (fr) Marx certes était athée, « matérialiste », etc. Mais chez un philosophe aussi, il convient de distinguer ce qu’il est de ce qu’il croit être. Ce qui compte, ce n’est d’ailleurs pas ce que Marx pensait et que nous ignorons, c’est ce que pensent les textes qu’il a écrits. Ce qui paraît en eux, de façon aussi évidente qu’exceptionnelle dans l’histoire de la philosophie, c’est une métaphysique de l’individu. Marx est l’un des premiers penseurs chrétiens de l’Occident.

Way , Thinking , Appearance , History

“Immediate reality is outside that window; so big it is, so much of it, everything entangled in everything else...What large thought Sabbath was struggling to express? Is he asking, "Whatever did happen to my own true life?"”

Philip Roth book Sabbath's Theater

Was it taking place elsewhere? But how then can looking out of this window be so gigantically real? Well, that is the difference between the true and the real. We don't get to live in the truth. That's why Nikki ran away. She was an idealist, an innocent, touching, talented illusionist who wanted to live in the truth. Well, if you found it, kid, you're the first. In my experience the direction of life is toward incoherence — precisely what you would never confront. Maybe that was the only coherent thing you could think to do: die to deny incoherence.
Sabbath's Theater (1995)

Life , Reality

“Looking back, it seems to me extraordinary that we should have contemplated having both a nurse and a servant, but they were considered essentials of life in those days, and were the last things we would have thought of dispensing with. To have committed the extravagance of a car, for instance, would never have entered our minds. Only the rich had cars.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Part V: War, §IV
An Autobiography (1977)

Life , Cars

“From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was forever hurled.
For me—farthest from earthly port to roam
Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might come.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XL

Home , Hope

“Do not think much of me, please. Think kindly of me; but oh, my friend, direct your thoughts to the Eternal Truth. I am, like you, struggling on the road. Perhaps a veil might in an instant fall down from your spirit, and you would be long ahead of us all. The reason you have had help is that in other lives you gave it to others. In every effort you made to lighten another mind and open it to Truth, you were helped yourself. Those pearls you found for another and gave to him, you really retained for yourself in the act of benevolence. For when one lives thus to help others, he is thereby putting in practice the rule to try and "kill out all sense of separateness," and thus gets little by little in possession of the true light.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

Vol. I, Letter 1
Letters That Have Helped Me (1891)

Light , Help , Truth , Thinking

“On closing this book, if I was to leave you with only one thought, it would be this: My life story could only happen in America. Look at my life: Here was a guy with very little observable potential- nothing much behind him except a couple loving parents. But because of the way this country functions I was able to make my way through and have a very good life. I don't think I had any special talent or ability. Anybody could do what I did if he wanted to. I've never resented anybody ho has something I didn't have, because I knew that in this country if I worked hard enough I could have it, too. The system in America allows for and welcomes success. That's worth fighting for if someone threatens to take it away. You can have anything or be anything you want in this country if you put your mind to it. Don't let anybody take that away from you.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 254

Love , Success , Country , Thinking

“They determined, once for all, to make an end of the spirit of freedom and emancipation, and to drive back and repress for ever the upward tendency of mankind. To undo the labour of twenty generations; to kill in the nineteenth century, by strangulation... Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire, religious scrutiny, philosophical scrutiny, universal scrutiny; to crush throughout all Europe this immense vegetation of free thought, here a tender blade, there a sturdy oak; ...to resuscitate all they could of the Inquisition, and to stifle all they could of intelligence; to stultify youth, in other words to brutalize the future;... to say to nations: "Eat and think no more;"”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part Second, I
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Freedom , Future , Intelligence , Universe

“This tribune was the terror of every tyranny and fanaticism, it was the hope of every one who was oppressed under Heaven. Whoever placed his foot upon that height, felt distinctly the pulsations of the great heart of mankind. There, providing he was a man of earnest purpose, his soul swelled within him, and shone without. A breath of universal philanthropy seized him, and filled his mind as the breeze fills the sail; so long as his feet rested upon those four planks, he was a stronger and a better man; he felt at that consecrated minute as if he were living the life of all the nations; words of charity for all men came to his lips; beyond the Assembly, grouped at his feet, and frequently in a tumult, he beheld the people, attentive, serious, with ears strained, and fingers on lips; and beyond the people, the human race, plunged in thought, seated in circles, and listening.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Book V, V
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Soul , Hope , Heart , People

“… when your body was destroyed as we entered here I was able to mn? you quickly through the process by which I became an immortal energy being. Thought you might appreciate it.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Из художественных произведений

“The demon of avarice, it seems to me, is extraordinarily complex and is baffling in his deceits. Often, when frustrated by the strictness of our renunciation, he immediately pretends to be a steward and a lover of the poor; he urges us to prepare a welcome for strangers who have not yet arrived or to send provisions for absent brethren. He makes us mentally visit prisons in the city and ransom those on sale as slaves. He suggests that we should attach ourselves to wealthy women, and advises us to be obsequious to others who have a full purse. And so, after deceiving the soul, little by little he engulfs it in avaricious thoughts and then hands it over to the demon of self-esteem.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

On Discrimination, vol. 1, p. 51
The Philokalia

Soul , Self-confidence , Lovers , Making love

“In the whole range of evil thoughts, none is richer in resources than self-esteem.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

On Discrimination, vol. 1, p. 46
The Philokalia

Self-confidence , Evil

“Mental states such as loneliness, compulsion, anguish, attachment, pain, and faith are not just "all in the head" but in the brain as well. Brain, mind, and body are a continuum. Our thoughts—intention, fear, images, suggestion, expectation— alter the brain's chemistry. And it works both ways; thoughts can be altered by changing the brain's chemistry with drugs, nutrients, oxygen. The brain is hopelessly complex.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

Pain , Faith , Loneliness , Way

“[We condemn those principles whose] necessary effect [is] to destroy the Catholic religion, and with it, the obedience due to kings. It is with this end in view that they establish, as a right of man in society, this absolute liberty, which not only assures the right of not being disturbed in regard to his religious opinions, but which also grants that license of thought, of writing and even shamelessly publishing on the subject of religion whatever the most unruly imagination might suggest. This monstrous right nevertheless appears to the Assembly to result from the equality and liberty which are natural to all men. But what could there be more outrageous than to establish among men this equality and this unbridled liberty which will snuff out reason, the most precious gift that nature has given to man, and the only one which distinguishes him from the animals?”

Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) pope and sovereign of the Papal States

Quod aliquantum (10 March 1791), quoted in André Latreille and Joseph E. Cunneen, 'The Catholic Church and the Secular State: The Church and the Secularization of Modern Societies', CrossCurrents Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 1963), pp. 220–221

Religion , Imagination , Nature , Animals

“There’s a good time coming, boys!
A good time coming.
We may not live to see the day,
But earth shall glisten in the ray
Of the good time coming.
Cannon-balls may aid the truth
But thought’s a weapon stronger;
We’ll win our battles by its aid,
Wait a little longer.”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"The Good Time Coming"
Voices from the Crowd, and Town Lyrics (1857)

Truth , Time , Waiting , Boy

“Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours.”

Chief Joseph (1840–1904) Nez Percé Chieftain

Speech rejecting the demands that he lead his people onto a reservation. (1876)

Thinking , Understanding

“Every action, physical or psychical, involves either integration or disintegration; every use of faculty belongs to the latter class. There is no more antagonism between growth and reproduction than between growth and thought, growth and muscular activity, growth and breathing.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 607
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

“The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Money , Happiness , Perfection , Love

“After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

Forgiveness , Courage , Tree , History

“The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. Evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought were consistent with the workings of the universe.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 4 “The Universality Argument (and the Relevance of Morality and Mathematics)” (p. 131)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

Sense , Behavior , Mathematics , Universe

“In the Hindu religion, one can[not] have freedom of speech. A Hindu must surrender his freedom of speech. He must act according to the Vedas. If the Vedas do not support the actions, instructions must be sought from the Smritis, and if the Smritis fail to provide any such instructions, he must follow in the footsteps of the great men.He is not supposed to reason. Hence, so long as you are in the Hindu religion, you cannot expect to have freedom of thought”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

As quoted in http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_salvation.html

Support , Religion , Freedom

“I’d do a lot of things differently now. It’s true I ended up on a team trying to win a ring, which rarely happens to a No. 2 pick, but in the end we’re all looking for excuses. I could say I didn’t get a proper chance, but that’s simply an excuse; it’s up to a young player to prove himself, work hard and wait for his chance. My approach was completely different. As a No. 2 pick coming from Europe, I thought I was sent by God, so I got into fights, got drunk before practices, spiting everyone, but I was spiting myself.”

Darko Miličić (1985) Serbian basketball player

As quoted in "Ex-Piston Darko Milicic admits to getting drunk before practice" https://www.mlive.com/pistons/index.ssf/2017/03/ex-piston_darko_milicic_admits.html (15 March 2017), MLive
2010s

Fight , God , Chance , Waiting

“I thought as a kid that talent was God-given, but it’s not. God gives you talent and you should use that talent with the real meaning of that word. I was stubborn. Maybe being young had something to do with it.”

Darko Miličić (1985) Serbian basketball player

As quoted in "Storyline: Whatever Happened to Darko Milicic" https://hoopshype.com/storyline/whatever-happened-to-darko-milicic/ (21 March 2016), HoopsHype
2010s

God

“But you know what this does show you? Things happen. Whoever thought of this two weeks ago? Who would’ve thought this could be going on four weeks ago? You wouldn’t. But things happen in life and you have to be prepared and you have to be flexible and you have to be able to go out and get it. And my guys that we have the best professionals in the world, the best in the world and we are so ready. At the same time that I initiated the first federally mandated quarantine in over 50 years. We had a quarantine some people. They weren’t happy, they weren’t happy about it. I want to tell you there are a lot of people that not so happy, but after two weeks they got happy. You know who got happy? The people around them got happy. That’s who got happy.”

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

Luciana Borio, former director of Medical and Biodefense Preparedness Policy at the National Security Council, said at a symposium at Emory University in Atlanta in 2018: "The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern, are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no." As quoted in Contrary to Trump’s Claim, A Pandemic Was Widely Expected at Some Point https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/contrary-to-trumps-claim-a-pandemic-was-widely-expected-at-some-point/ (March 20, 2020) by Rem Rieder, FactCheck.org.
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

Time , Happiness , People , World

“We have an invisible enemy. We have a problem a month ago nobody ever thought about. [...] This is a bad one, this is a very bad one. This is bad in the sense that it's so contagious. It's just so contagious. Sort of record-setting type contagion.”

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

Coronavirus task force press briefing, , quoted in * 2020-03-17

The Last Great Pandemic

Jarrett Stepman

The Daily Signal

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/03/17/the-last-great-pandemic/
2020s, 2020, March

Sense , Problem , Bad luck

“That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Loss , Soul , Time , Sun

“And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills;”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Food , Future , Hope , Pleasure

“If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou !
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Lines (1795)

Imagination , Wisdom , Heart , Nature

“And oft I thought (my fancy was-so strong)
That I, at last, a resting-place had found:
'Here: will I dwell,' said I,' my whole life long,
Roaming the illimitable waters round;
Here will I live, of all but heaven disowned.
And end my days upon the peaceful flood—
To break my dream the vessel reached its bound;
And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Guilt and Sorrow, st. 41 (1791-1794) Section XLI

Home , Peace , Food , Strong

“After coming home, I listened to the radio and cleaned up a little. A woman on All Things Considered wrote a book of advice called If You Want to Write and mentioned the importance of keeping a diary. It was valuable, she said, because after a while you'd stop being forced and pretentious and become honest and unafraid of your thoughts.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

01.07.1983 - p.94
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

Home , Books

“Sickened by vermin
that feed, in the shade of the good,
on envy, greed, and suspicion,
by the snake-like hissing
of venomous tongues
that fear hate and revile
the mystery of free thought
and upright heart
The spirit would cast aside all deceit,
open his heart to the spirit he trusts,
and unite with him freely as one.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

Fear , Hate , Heart , Envy

“Originally one thought that if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country.”

Howard H. Aiken (1900–1973) pioneer in computing, original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer

1952. Quoted in I. Bernard Cohen: Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. 1999. MIT Press. p. 292. And I. Bernard Cohen: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 20.3 pp. 27–33. (1998)

Country

“In the winter on a Sunday afternoon, I can spend six hours in front of the fireplace, just looking at the flames and thinking. In the evening, I’m drunk with beautiful thoughts. My wife says to me, ‘What are you looking at?’ I say, ‘The fire.’ We have to take a step backward.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: 10 Productivity Tips From the King of Cashmere, Brunello Cucinelli https://medium.com/@om/10-productivity-tips-from-the-king-of-cashmere-brunello-cucinelli-79c9cf74d9de Medium, Om Malik, April 27, 2015

Beauty , Thinking , Winter

“My first goal was, I didn’t want to be a cook or a steward … So I went to aircraft-mechanic school. I still had to prove to people that thought I was genetically inferior that I wasn’t too stupid to drain the oil out of an airplane.”

Bill Withers (1938–2020) American singer-songwriter and musician

On entering the US Navy in 1956.
Rollingstone interview (2015)

School , Cooking , People , Stupidity

“It's tough, the 400, I won't lie. The first 200 is pure speed and then the last 200, it shows who's got that speed endurance training in their legs. And obviously the last 50, you've just gotta pray because lactic is hitting hard. You need to be able to hold that endurance. … A lot of people had doubted me when I first became vegan, but my energy levels increased incredibly and my iron, my B12, everything that people said would become deficient, were amazing. I thought, I'm gonna make sure I'm beating them all on the track. I mean, we're all friends, but it was pretty cool to finish my Australian domestic season undefeated. And to win the nationals was obviously that little cherry on top.”

Morgan Mitchell (1994) Australian athlete

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

People , Season , Speed , Lie

“Ideology, legitimacy, authority: Such topics used to interest academics no end. The mania for quantifying the social sciences and the attendant decline in foreign-language acquisition have changed things. I remember Sovietologists lamenting this trend when I was at school in the 1980s. It’s gone much, much further since. What cannot be researched with the proper statistical-numerical methodology is thought beneath serious analysis. On the rare occasions when a non-quantifier takes the microphone at a conference, the Gradgrinds lean back with an indulgent smile: Time for some light relief.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, League Confederation Goes Outer-Track (September 2018)

School , Time , Light , Smile

“The last scene came really, really early, disconnected from even the idea of a woman painter…I wanted to write a love story and I thought, ‘What do I want to tell?’ And that scene came up really, really quickly, alone, by itself. The weird compass of the film was its last scene. That’s a compass, but it’s a high pressure one.”

Céline Sciamma (1978) French director and screenwriter

On her creative process for Portrait of a Lady on Fire in “‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ Filmmaker Céline Sciamma Is Trying to Break Your Heart” https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-filmmaker-celine-sciamma-interview-1202193537/ in IndieWire (2019 Dec 05)

Idea , Love , Making love

“Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the inflexible disciplines of my life.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Interview with Gavin Evans, Soweto (15 February 1990) recounted in COVID-19 lockdown: Can you do Nelson Mandela's Robben Island prison cell workout? https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-lockdown-can-you-do-nelson-mandelas-prison-cell-workout?video_autoplay=true, 7 April 2020
1990s

Training , Life , Exercises

“For, while the heart is full of thoughts for a little group of selves, near and dear to us, how shall the rest of mankind fare in our souls? What percentage of love and care will there remain to bestow on the “great orphan?””

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

And how shall the “still small voice” make itself heard in a soul entirely occupied with its own privileged tenants? What room is there left for the needs of Humanity en bloc...? He who would profit by the wisdom of the universal mind, has to reach it through the whole of Humanity without distinction of race, complexion, religion, or social status. It is altruism, not ego-ism even in its most legal and noble conception, that can lead the unit to merge its little Self in the Universal Selves. It is... to this work that the true disciple of true Occultism has to devote himself if he would obtain... divine Wisdom and Knowledge. p. 62
Practical Occultism (1888)

Heart , Soul , Making love , Love

“But Confucianism was not merely the official philosophy of the Chinese administration. Confucius ideals were accepted by the majority of the Chinese people, and for over two thousand years deeply influenced their life and thought.”

Michael H. Hart book The 100

about Confucius, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History p. 29/30
Muhammad, Confucius

Life , People

“Studies of thought and modes of reasoning have been central in the history of anthropology from the nineteenth century to the present day.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 8 : Thought

Study , History

“Lacking education, lacking a tenacity of purpose, lacking a willingness to work hard, he will not be an object of employers' competition. What leader of Negro thought is fostering the ancient virtues of diligence and honesty and loyalty? It is so much easier to seek quotas for Negroes?”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

"Inferior Workers" sub-section, p. 12
"The problem of the Negro," 1965

Education , Loyalty

“The Jesuits had helped to instil in me this thought that our calling in life was to be, to use the phrase: 'a man for others.'”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Interview with Annabel Crabb, Kitchen Cabinet, ABC Television 4 September 2013.
Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015)

Life , Help

“I guess in the end I'm a bit like Bill Clinton on this matter, who said that he thought [abortion] should be safe, legal and rare. And I underline 'rare'.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Stated in interview: "The Contender". 60 Minutes. ninemsn.com.au. 5 March 2010 http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1020354.
Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015)

“I want them [criminals] to literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences.”

Priti Patel (1972) British politician

I want criminals to be terrified, says Priti Patel: New Home Secretary vows to return to zero-tolerance policing as she demands full explanation over bungled 'Nick' sex abuse inquiry https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316055/I-want-criminals-terrified-says-Priti-Patel-Home-Secretary-restore-confidence-Britain.html (2 August 2019)
2019

Feeling

“Don’t you start. It’s bad enough that one of us feels he could have done more. We’re human, Campion—that’s all it boils down to. Human and not nearly as clever as we thought we were when it counted. End of story. When they put up the gravestone for our species, that’ll be the epitaph.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 39 (p. 509)

Bad luck , Feeling

“It was astonishing how quickly friendship could turn to enmity, she thought, like a compass needle swinging from one pole to the other.
They’d been excellent friends. They’d make excellent enemies as well.”

Alastair Reynolds book Pushing Ice

Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 8 (p. 132)

Making love , Friendship

“What vexations there are in the external customs which are thought to belong to religion, but which in reality are related to ecclesiastical form! The merits of piety have been set up in such away that the ritual is of no use at all except for the simple submission of the believers to ceremonies and observances, expiations and mortifications (the more the better). But such compulsory services, which are mechanically easy (because no vicious inclination is thus sacrificed), must be found morally very difficult and burdensome to the rational man. When, therefore, the great moral teacher said, 'My commandments are not difficult,' he did not mean that they require only limited exercise of strength in order to be fulfilled. As a matter of fact, as commandments which require pure dispositions of the heart, they are the hardest that can be given. Yet, for a rational man, they are nevertheless infinitely easier to keep than the commandments involving activity which accomplishes nothing... [since] the mechanically easy feels like lifting hundredweights to the rational man when he sees that all the energy spent is wasted.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View https://books.google.com/books?id=TbkVBMKz418C. Translated by Victor Lyle Dowdell. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809320608. Page 33.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Religion , Heart , Teachers , Reality

“I always thought economics wasn’t the be-all and end-all of life. Now I realise it might be the end-all.”

Shaun Chamberlin

Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2018) https://twitter.com/DarkOptimism/status/1071438457606680576

Life

“All our thoughts and beliefs are somehow hollow until they find expression in action.”

Shaun Chamberlin

The Transition Timeline: for a local, resilient future, (2009), p. 167 http://www.darkoptimism.org/books.html#TheTransitionTimeline

“Aristotle thought that men were naturally superior to women and Greeks naturally superior to other races; Victorians thought white men had to shoulder the burden of being superior to savages; and Nazis thought Aryans were a master race. We have come to reject these and many other supposedly natural hierarchies; the history of what we consider moral progress can be viewed as, in large part, the replacement of hierarchical worldviews with a presumption in favor of forms of egalitarianism. This substitution places the burden of proof on those who would deny equal consideration to the interests of all concerned, rather than on those who seek such consideration. Consequently, some reason is needed to justify the fairness of maintaining a hierarchical worldview when we are dealing with animals.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Source: Morals, Reason, and Animals (1987), p. 107

History , Nature , Women , Animals

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

History , Question , Nature , Universe

“Only minutes were required to impress these thoughts indelibly on their minds, for a thought is instantaneous and its grasping depends on its strength and clarity.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

Source: The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958), p. 211

Dependency

“I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 4 (p. 60)

Way , Teachers , Question

“Going to Bits. This phrase me to day and is indeed the one I have been looking for; not tragic, not mortal disintegration; only a central weakness which prevents me from concentrating or settling down I have so wanted to write and write ahead. The phrase "obligatory creation" has haunted me. I have so wanted to get out of my morning bath promptly: have decided to do so beforehand, and have then lain in it as usual and watched myself not getting out. It looks as if there is a physical as well as a moral break in the orders I send out. I have plenty of interesting thoughts but keep losing them like the post cards I have written, or like my cap. I can't clear anything up yet interrupt a 'good read' in order to clear up. I hope tomorrow to copy out a piece of someone else's prose: it is the best device known to me for taking one out of inself, Plunge into anothers minutiae.'”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

31-1-61

p. 224
Commonplace Book (1985)

Hope , Reading

“Empty. Barren. These were the true conditions of the Universe, she thought; life, and variety, and energy, were isolated aberrations.”

Stephen Baxter book Ring

Source: Ring (1994), Chapter 18 (p. 743)

Universe , Life

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