Quotes about thousand (2694 quotes, page 22)

“There was a tsunami and there are terrible natural disasters, all of this because of too little Torah study. Where there is Torah it sustains the world. There are negros there [in New Orleans]. Negros will study Torah? Let's bring them a tsunami, drown them. Hundreds of thousands were left without a shelter. Tens of thousands died. All of this is because they have no God.”

Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) Israeli rabbi

Regarding Hurricane Katrina, September 6, 2005
[Zvi, Alush, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3138779,00.html, Rabbi: Hurricane punishment for pullout, ynetnews.com, 7 September 2005, 2007-09-23]
Hebrew source http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3138771,00.html

God , World , Nature , Study

“Of course after the conference a desperate attempt was made by Mr. Bonham-Carter to show that of course they weren't committed to federation at all. Well I prefer to go by what Mr. Grimond says; I think he's more important. And when he was asked about this question there was no doubt about his answer; it was on television. And the question was [laughter] I see what you mean, I see what you mean. Yes was the question: "But the mood of your conference today was that Europe should be a federal state. Now if we had to choose between a federal Europe and the Commonwealth, this would have to be a choice wouldn't it? You couldn't have the two." And Mr. Grimond replied in these brilliantly clear sentences: "You could have a Commonwealth linked, though not of course a direct political link, you could have a Commonwealth link of other sorts. But of course a federal Europe I think is a very important point. Now the real thing is that if you are going to have a democratic Europe, if you are going to control the running of Europe democratically, you've got to move towards some form of federalism and if anyone says different to that they're really misleading the public." That's one in the eye for Mr. Bonham-Carter. [laughter] Now we must be clear about this, it does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent nation-state. I make no apology for repeating it, the end of a thousand years of history. You may say: "All right let it end." But, my goodness, it's a decision that needs a little care and thought. [clapping] And it does mean the end of the Commonwealth; how can one really seriously suppose that if the mother country, the centre of the Commonwealth, is a province of Europe, which is what federation means, it could continue to exist as the mother country of a series of independent nations; it is sheer nonsense.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1962, page 159.
Speaking against the Liberal Party's policy of British membership of the European Communities, Labour Party Conference, 2 October 1962.
See the video clip here http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/6967366.stm

History , Idea , Mood , Question

“There comes a time in everyone's life when you have to admit you were wrong. It is Sunday morning and i am preparing to go to church and get right with God. But first I have to get right with my family, my friends, and the thousands of strangers who have been hurt by my insensitive remarks. I am sorry. I have damaged the national debate on the very real subject of sexual harassment, abuse and unfortunately rape. It is not a laughing matter. It wasn't when I prosecuted sexual misconduct for the State of Ohio, and it is not now. To my daughters, Katie Corrin O'Neill, Tiffany O'Neill Scullen, and my sisters Patricia O'Neill Sacha and Mary Kaye O'Neill, accomplished women all, please accept my public apology for dragging you into this matter. You deserved better treatment than this. I love you, respect you, and yes. I was wrong. Thank you for loving me enough to stand up to my departure from a loving life.”

Bill O'Neill (1947) Ohio judge

Facebook post, 11-19-2017

Love , Life , Women , God

“I am all deities in one. You may endeavour your best for thousands of years and have all mankind with you in your search. But you cannot understand My Reality.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

US ed. of Kasturi's authorized biography Sathyam Sivam Sundaram Vol 3 page 315

Search , Understanding , Reality

“My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through life without ever having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before, and by thousands.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic. The normal human society is very little troubled by them. Whenever a new one appears the average man displays signs of dismay and resentment. The only way he can take in such a new idea is by translating it crudely into terms of more familiar ideas. That translation is one of the chief functions of politicians, not to mention journalists. They devote themselves largely to debasing the ideas launched by their betters. This debasement is intellectually reprehensible, but probably necessary to carry on the business of the world.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

13
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Life , World , Way , Idea

“Then King Edward ordered his horsemen to charge,
Thirty thousand in number, it was very large;
They thought to o'erwhelm them ere they could rise from their knees,
But they met a different destiny, which did them displease;
For the horsemen fell into the spik'd pits in the way,
And, with broken ranks and confusion, they all fled away,
But few of them escap'd death from the spik'd pits,
For the Scots with their swords hack'd them to bits.”

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

Poetry, The Battle of Bannockburn

Death , Way

“You don't need to do nation building in Israel, we're already built. You don't need to export democracy to Israel, we've already got it. You don't need to send American troops to Israel, we defend ourselves… Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East, Israel is what is right about the Middle East… The tyranny in Tehran brutalizes its own people. It supports attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It subjugates Lebanon and Gaza. It sponsors terror worldwide… A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world. I want you to understand what this means. They could put the bomb anywhere. They could put it on a missile. It could be on a container ship in a port, or in a suitcase on a subway… Now the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after six million Jews were murdered, Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Leaders who spew such venom, should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet. But there is something that makes the outrage even greater: The lack of outrage. In much of the international community, the calls for our destruction are met with utter silence. It is even worse because there are many who rush to condemn Israel for defending itself against Iran's terror proxies… When we say never again, we mean never again! Israel always reserves the right to defend itself… In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace… No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond, between the Jewish people and the Jewish land… Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated. But it can only be negotiated with partners committed to peace.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress http://www.c-span.org/video/?299666-1/israeli-prime-minister-netanyahu-address-joint-meeting-congress (24 May 2011).
2010s, 2011, Address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress (May 2011)

God , People , World , Peace

“As Soviet power grows, there will be a greater aversion to Communist parties everywhere. So we must practice the techniques of withdrawal. Never appear in the foreground; let our friends do the work. We must always remember that one sympathizer is generally worth more than a dozen militant Communists. A university professor, who without being a party member, lends himself to the interests of the Soviet Union, is worth more than a hundred men with party cards. A writer of reputation, or a retired general, are worth more than 500 poor devils who don't know any better than to get themselves beaten up by the police. Every man has his value, his merit. The writer who, without being a party member, defends the Soviet Union, the union leader who is outside our ranks but defends Soviet international policy, is worth more than a thousand party members.”

Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949) Bulgarian politician

Reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 20-21.
Misattributed

Men , Universe , Appearance

“Let me beg my readers to do their utmost for the success of the Peace Ballot. There is no single thing which they can do of greater value for Peace. … Every vote is wanted and may contribute to prevent war and save the lives of countless thousands of our fellow citizens.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

As quoted in The Avoidable War : Lord Cecil and the Policy of Principle, 1933-1935 (1999) by J. Kenneth Brody, Ch. 11 : Voting For Peace, p. 173

War , Peace , Success

“In 1869 that grand old warrior of the social revolution, the elder Liebknecht, was arrested and sentenced to prison for three months, because of his war, as a Socialist, on the Kaiser and on the Junkers that rule Germany. In the meantime the Franco-Prussian war broke out. Liebknecht and Bebel were the Socialist members in the Reichstag. They were the only two who had the courage to protest against taking Alsace-Lorraine from France and annexing it to Germany. And for this they were sentenced two years to a prison fortress charged with high treason; because, even in that early day, almost fifty years ago, these leaders, these forerunners of the international Socialist movement were fighting the Kaiser and fighting the Junkers of Germany. They have continued to fight them from that day to this. Multiplied thousands of Socialists have languished in the jails of Germany because of their heroic warfare upon the despotic ruling class of that country.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

War , Courage , Fight , Country

“The format of the nightly newscasts is still very much 1981 — "Tremble, onlookers! I am the anchorman and now here is a miracle: a report by satellite from many thousands of miles away. I will return to introduce another one in due course."”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

" As Rather signs off 'Evening News,' the 'voice of God' anchor era ends http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0309rather09.html" by Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic (2005-03-09)

“Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

“Thousands of alienated young Muslims, most of them born and bred here but who regard themselves as an army within, are waiting for an opportunity to help to destroy the society that sustains them.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/rel/islam/britain-muslims.html

Waiting , Help

“Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old Witch, tough-lived as a Turtle and divisible as the Polyp, repullulative in a thousand Snips and Cuttings, integra et in toto! She is sure to get the better of Lady MIND in the long run, and to take her revenge too — transforms our To Day into a Canvass dead-colored to receive the dull featureless Portait of Yesterday.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)
Letters

Color , Revenge , Nature , Dead

“If the statistics of any of our cities could be taken on this subject you would find that a vast multitude of women not only support themselves, but masculines also. A great legion of men amount to nothing, and a woman by marriage manacled to one of these nonentities needs condolence. A woman standing outside the marriage relation is several hundred thousand times better off than a woman badly married.”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902), The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894 p 102.
The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894

Women , Men , Marriage , Support

“I was in the enormous and almost deserted square in front of the Great People's Study House—all open spaces in Pyongyang remain deserted unless filled with parades of hundreds of thousands of human automata—when a young Korean slid surreptitiously up to me and asked, "Do you speak English?"
An electric moment: for in North Korea, unsupervised contact between a Korean and a foreigner is utterly unthinkable, as unthinkable as shouting, "Down with Big Brother!"
"Yes," I replied.
"I am a student at the Foreign Languages Institute. Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the greatest, the only pleasure of my life."
It was the most searing communication I have ever received in my life. We parted immediately afterward and of course will never meet again. For him, Dickens and Shakespeare (which the regime permitted him to read with quite other ends in view) guaranteed the possibility not just of freedom but of truly human life itself.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

The Dystopian Imagination http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_oh_to_be.html (Autumn 2001).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Life , People , Pleasure , Communication

“The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organised life may, in part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of Nature, who, as before stated, has, in all the varieties of her offspring, a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousand-fold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker, less circumstance-suited, being prematurely destroyed.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

Life , Nature , Parting

“World order will be secured only when the whole world has laid down these weapons which seem to offer us present security but threaten the future survival of the human race. That armistice day seems very far away. The vast resources of this planet are being devoted more and more to the means of destroying, instead of enriching, human life.
But the world was not meant to be a prison in which man awaits his execution. Nor has mankind survived the tests and trials of thousands of years to surrender everything — including its existence — now. This Nation has the will and the faith to make a supreme effort to break the log jam on disarmament and nuclear tests — and we will persist until we prevail, until the rule of law has replaced the ever dangerous use of force.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Second State of the Union Address

Life , World , Faith , Law

“Pure air and water, cleanliness, a proper diet, purity of life, and a firm trust in God are remedies for the want of which thousands are dying; yet these remedies are going out of date because their skillful use requires work that the people do not appreciate.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Book II, Ch. 29, p. 287
Selected Messages (1958 - 1980)

Life , God , People , Water

“The hand tools of early times are used no more. Mammoth machines have taken their place. A few thousand capitalists own them and many millions of workingmen use them.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

Time

“Thank you very much Mr Meyer, Anthony Meyer that is. I want to thank you, I want to thank the police of course, and my wife Marina and my family, and my utterly brilliant campaign team, the Conservative GLA candidates — some of whom were extremely unlucky tonight — and of course the thousands of Conservative activists, the ward captains and knocker-uppers who did such an amazing job today, and indeed yesterday, rather.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

Family

“[I]n all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is several thousand times greater than the highest homicide rate in any American city.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

citing the research of George Williams from "Huxley's Evolution and Ethics in Sociobiological Perspective" in Zygon (v.23/88)
Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Study , Time

“I was borne on an eagle's wing,
Till with the noon-sun perishing;
Then I stood in a world alone,
From which all other life was gone,
Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled,
A world o'er which a curse was said:
The trees stood leafless all, and bare,
The sky spread, but no sun was there:
Night came, no stars were on her way,
Morn came without a look of day,—
As night and day shared one pale shroud,
Without a colour or a cloud.
And there were rivers, but they stood
Without a murmur on the flood,
Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,—
The sea lay silent on the shore,
Without a sign upon its breast
Save of interminable rest:
And there were palaces and halls,
But silence reign'd amid their walls,
Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound
Rose from the thousands gather'd round;
All wore the same white, bloodless hue,
All the same eyes of glassy blue,
Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those
No gentle hand was near to close.
And all seem'd, as they look'd on me,
In wonder that I yet could be
A moving shape of warmth and breath
Alone amid a world of death.”

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

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Life , Death , World , Way

“Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.”

Isabel Paterson (1886–1961) author and editor

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 292

Men , Effort , Betrayal

“The king, in his zeal to propagate the faith, now marched against the Hindoos of Nagrakote [Nagarkot Kangra], breaking down their idols and razing their temples. The fort, at that time denominated the Fort of Bheem, was closely invested by the Mahomedans, who had first laid waste the country around it with fire and sword.'…'In the year AH 402 (AD 1011), Mahmood resolved on the conquest of Tahnesur [Thanesar (Haryana)], in the kingdom of Hindoostan. It had reached the ears of the king that Tahnesur was held in the same veneration by idolaters, as Mecca by the faithful; that they had there set up a number of idols, the principal of which they called Jugsom, pretending that it had existed ever since the creation. Mahmood having reached Punjab, required, according to the subsisting treaty with Anundpal, that his army should not be molested on its march through his country…'The Raja's brother, with two thousand horse was also sent to meet the army, and to deliver the following message:- "My brother is the subject and tributary of the King, but he begs permission to acquaint his Majesty, that Tahnesur is the principal place of worship of the inhabitants of the country: that if it is required by the religion of Mahmood to subvert the religion of others, he has already acquitted himself of that duty, in the destruction of the temple of Nagrakote. But if he should be pleased to alter his resolution regarding Tahnesur, Anundpal promises that the amount of the revenues of that country shall be annually paid to Mahmood; that a sum shall also be paid to reimburse him for the expense of his expedition, besides which, on his own part he will present him with fifty elephants, and jewels to a considerable amount." Mahmood replied, "The religion of the faithful inculcates the following tenet: That in proportion as the tenets of the prophet are diffused, and his followers exert themselves in the subversion of idolatry, so shall be their reward in heaven; that, therefore, it behoved him, with the assistance of God, to root out the worship of idols from the face of all India. How then should he spare Tahnesur?"… This answer was communicated to the Raja of Dehly, who, resolving to oppose the invaders, sent messengers throughout Hindoostan to acquaint the other rajas that Mahmood, without provocation, was marching with a vast army to destroy Tahnesur, now under his immediate protection. He observed, that if a barrier was not expeditiously raised against this roaring torrent, the country of Hindoostan would be soon overwhelmed, and that it behoved them to unite their forces at Tahnesur, to avert the impending calamity….”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. I, pp. 27-37.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

God , Faith , Religion , Communication

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love , Life , Death , War

“The sin of thousands always goes unpunished.”
Quidquid multis peccatur inultum est.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book V, line 260 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

“The population of the earth today doubles regularly. If you were to draw up the population growth on a chart you would see that it goes back to zero about five thousand years ago. If man has been here millions of years like evolutionists teach, where is the population?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Drawing

“In 1000 Muslim numbers in India were microscopic. In 1200 they were perhaps about three to four hundred thousand. By 1400 their number had risen probably to 3.2 million and they formed about 1.85 percent of the total population. In 1600 they were probably 15 million. And from the 1:9 to 1:10 Muslim-Hindu ratio in 1600 the proportion of Muslims to Hindus had gone up to about 1:7 by the year 1800…Thus at about the middle of the ninteenth century, the Muslim-Hindu ratio stood approximately at 1:6…. By the end of the nineteenth century, the ratio had changed to 1:5, and Stanely Lanepoole, whose Medieval India was first published in 1903, rightly observes: “The population of India in the present day is over three hundred millions, and every sixth man is a Muslim.””

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

Change

“What we have found in Afghanistan confirms that, far from ending there, our war against terror is only beginning. Most of the 19 men who hijacked planes on September the 11th were trained in Afghanistan's camps, and so were tens of thousands of others. Thousands of dangerous killers, schooled in the methods of murder, often supported by outlaw regimes, are now spread throughout the world like ticking time bombs, set to go off without warning.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Men , War , World , School

“The fort of Kalinjar which was celebrated throughout the world for being as strong as the wall of Alexander was taken. 'The temples were converted into mosques and abodes of goodness and the ejaculations of the bead-counters and the voices of the summoners to prayer ascended to the highest heaven, and the very name of idolatry was annihilated.' 'Fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery, and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Elephants and cattle, and countless arms also, became the spoil of the victors.
Kalinjar (Uttar Pradesh) . Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 231 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Men , World , Strong

“Young Ireland, the Catholic Party and its newspaper organs in Dublin are trying to do all the mischief they can. They are praising the mutineers, and calling upon the Irish to follow their example. I think it will be advisable to call out and embody five thousand more Militia, making twenty thousand in all, and it would be best to bring over to England all the Irish regiments belonging to the Catholic counties, and to send English regiments to Ireland. Some of the Northern Irish regiments would be well left in Ireland. They are chiefly Protestants, and would be delighted to put down the Croppys if they should rise.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Lord Panmure (28 September 1857), quoted in Sir George Douglas and Sir George Dalhousie Ramsay (eds.), The Panmure Papers (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908), p. 436.
1850s

Thinking

“And God help you if you are a phoenix, and you dare to rise up from the ash.
A thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy, while you're just flying past.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

32 Flavors
Song lyrics

God , Jealousy , Past , Help

“Those who urge an alliance with Assad cite the example of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet despot who became an ally of Western democracies against Nazi Germany. I never liked historical comparisons and like this one even less. To start with, the Western democracies did not choose Stalin as an ally; he was thrusted upon them by the turn of events. When the Second World War started Stalin was an ally of Hitler thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union actively participated in the opening phase of the war by invading Poland from the east as the Germans came in from the West. Before that, Stalin had rendered Hitler a big service by eliminating thousands of Polish army officers in The Katyn massacre. Between September 1939 and June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was an objective ally of Hitler. Stalin switched sides when he had no choice if he wanted to save his skin. The situation in Syria today is different. There is no alliance of democracies which, thanks to Obama’s enigmatic behavior, lack any strategy in the Middle East. Unlike Stalin, Assad has not switched sides if only because there is no side to switch to. Assad regards ISIS as a tactical ally against other armed opposition groups. This is why Russia is now focusing its air strikes against non-ISIS armed groups opposed to Assad. More importantly, Assad has none of the things that Stalin had to offer the Allies. To start with Stalin could offer the vast expanse of territory controlled by the Soviet Union and capable of swallowing countless German divisions without belching. Field Marshal von Paulus’ one-million man invasion force was but a drop in the ocean of the Soviet landmass. In contrast, Assad has no territorial depth to offer. According to the Iranian General Hossein Hamadani, who was killed in Aleppo, Assad is in nominal control of around 20 percent of the country. Stalin also had an endless supply of cannon fodder, able to ship in millions from the depths of the Urals, Central Asia and Siberia. In contrast, Assad has publicly declared he is running out of soldiers, relying on Hezbollah cannon fodder sent to him by Tehran. If Assad has managed to hang on to part of Syria, it is partly because he has an air force while his opponents do not. But even that advantage has been subject to the law of diminishing returns. Four years of bombing defenseless villages and towns has not changed the balance of power in Assad’s favor. This may be why his Russian backers decided to come and do the bombing themselves. Before, the planes were Russian, the pilots Syrian. Now both planes and pilots are Russian, underlining Assad’s increasing irrelevance. Stalin’s other card, which Assad lacks, consisted of the USSR’s immense natural resources, especially the Azerbaijan oilfields which made sure the Soviet tanks could continue to roll without running out of petrol. Assad in contrast has lost control of Syria’s oilfields and is forced to buy supplies from ISIS or smugglers operating from Turkey. There are other differences between Stalin then and Assad now. Adulated as “the Father of the Nation” Stalin had the last word on all issues. Assad is not in that position. In fact, again according to the late Hamadani in his last interview published by Iranian media, what is left of the Syrian Ba’athist regime is run by a star chamber of shadowy characters who regard Assad as nothing but a figurehead.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: No, Bashar Al-Assad is no Joseph Stalin http://english.aawsat.com/2015/10/article55345413/opinion-no-bashar-al-assad-is-no-joseph-stalin, Ashraq Al-Awsat (16 Oct, 2015).

War , World , Law , Behavior

“As some of us noted before Saddam Hussein’s 2003 fall, banning the Ba’ath as such was a mistake – for, in a sense, the Ba’ath had also been a victim of Saddam’s savage rule. The Ba’ath, modeled on European fascist parties, was never a democratic movement. Yet, before Saddam turned it into an empty shell to be filled with his personality cult, it had been a genuine political movement, representing a significant segment of Iraqi opinion. It had started as a predominantly Shiite party seeking to downplay sectarianism by promoting pan-Arab ideas. Saddam turned it into a sectarian party, first dominated by the Arab Sunni minority and eventually by his Tikriti clan. The wisest course would’ve been to let those Ba’athists who had been purged, imprisoned and exiled under Saddam to reclaim their party and rebuild it with full respect for Iraq’s new democratic and pluralist political system. Those Ba’athists who committed crimes were known to all and could’ve been blacklisted and tried as individuals. The blanket ban suddenly transformed some 1.4 million civil servants, including tens of thousands of teachers and medical doctors and some half a million military personnel, into pariahs simply because they’d been nominal Ba’ath members. Yet most had joined simply to protect their careers under a brutal regime.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Iraq: Reconciling with the Ba'ath" http://nypost.com/2008/01/16/iraq-reconciling-with-the-baath/, New York Post (January 16, 2008).
New York Post

Idea , Sense , Teachers , Personality

“There's a Legion that never was 'listed,
That carries no colours or crest,
But, split in a thousand detachments,
Is breaking the road for the rest.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Lost Legion, Stanza 1 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

“Ever since [ Copernicus], writers eager to drive the lesson home have urged us […] to abandon all sentimental egoism, and to see ourselves objectively in the true perspective of time and space. What precisely does this mean? In a full 'main feature' film, recapitulating faithfully the complete history of the universe, the rise of human beings from the first beginnings of man to the achievements of the twentieth century would flash by in a single second. Alternatively, if we decided to examine the universe objectively in the sense of paying equal attention to portions of equal mass, this would result in a lifelong preoccupation with interstellar dust, relieved only at brief intervals by a survey of incandescent masses of hydrogen — not in a thousand million lifetimes would the turn come to give man even a second's notice. It goes without saying that no one — scientists included — looks at the universe in this way, whatever lip-service is given to 'objectivity.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 3

Way , Home , History , Sense

“Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

Source: The Spanish Drama (1846), Ch. 2

Beauty , Spring

“I might run from her for a thousand years and she is still my baby child. Our love is so furious that we burn each other out.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

In Katharine Viner The Guardian Year 2006 http://books.google.com/books?id=FqEWAQAAIAAJ, Random House, 2007, p. 287

Love , Baby

“Thousands of angels at thy gate,
And great archangels stand,
And twenty thousand chariots wait,
Great Lord, thy dread command!
Through all thy great, thy vast domains,
With godlike honours clad,
Captivity in captive chains
Triumphing thou hast led.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Paraphrase of the 68th Psalm

Angels , Waiting

“And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.”

James Russell Lowell A Fable for Critics

Pt. V - Cooper, st. 3
A Fable for Critics (1848)

Thinking , Freedom , Strong

“Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions — beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement — near tomato fields in San Diego County, tomato fields which use the most modern farm technology.
Vicious rats gnaw on them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices. And they carry in water from irrigation pumps.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

What the Future Holds (1984)

Food , Sleep , Tree , Water

“Right after the Flood, as all of the water went down, all of the decayed plant matter would have made the water very high in minerals and decayed plant and animal life would have been high in nutrients to make anything to grow. Food would have been readily available with all of the rotting carcasses of the vegetation and the animals. The coral could have grown much faster under these conditions, then it would have slowed down to its current rate. People who have studied coral reefs say that they could have been formed in four to five thousand years with no problem. If the earth is older than that, why aren’t the the coral reefs much larger? Their rate of growth indicates a young age for the earth.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Life , People , Age , Food

“There was also a real Dayton out there, a charming small Ohio city, famous as the birthplace of the Wright Brothers. Its citizens energized us from the outset. Unlike the population of, say, Noew York, Geneva or Washington, which would scarcely notice another conference, Daytonians were proud to be part of history. Large signs at the commercial airport hailed Dayton as the "temporary center of international peace". The local newspapers and television stations covered the story from every angle, drawing the people deeper into the proceedings. When we ventured into a restaurant or a shopping center downtown, people crowded around, aying that they were praying for us. Warren Christopher was given at least one standing ovation in a restaurant. Families on the air base placed "candles of peace" in their front windows, and people gathered in peace vigils outside the base. One day they formed a "peace chain", although it was not large enough to surround the sprawling eight-thousand-acre base. Ohio's famous ethnic diversity was only on display. We did everything possible to emphasize the fact that in the American heartland people from every part of southeastern Europe lived together in peace, their competition restricted to softball games, church rivalries, and the occasional barroom fight. (…)”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 234

People , Family , Peace , History

“Sultan Firoz Tughlaq writes in his Fatuhat that he appeased by means of gifts the heirs of those who had been deprived of a limb, nose, eye, hand or foot in the time of his late lord and patron Sultan Muhammad Shah. Firoz Tughlaq is known for his kind-heartedness but, according to Shams Siraj Afif, he killed one lakh 80 thousand Bengalis in war. Towers of skulls of the killed were erected. The chronicler adds, "Firoz Shah was near the mound of skulls with all magnificence; and glory and was inspecting the counting of the heads."”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif, quoted in Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

War , Time

“If Western Europe and the United States committed seven billion dollars annually to the cause of clean drinking water worldwide, that investment would save four thousand lives a day”…
“Seven billion dollars. That’s less than what Europeans spend each year for perfume and Americans for cosmetic surgery. Before he went to the gallows, Enoch Anthem spoke often about Christ turning water into wine, but he never once implored Christendom to turn perfume into water.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 16 (p. 368)

Drink , Water , Wine , Christ

“Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Truth , Way

“And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Britannia Rediviva (1688), line 208.

Way

“Today we are asking our political system to do things of which the founding fathers never dreamed. The government they designed for a few hundred thousand people now serves a nation of almost 230 million people. Their small coastal republic now spans beyond a continent, and we now have the responsibility to help lead much of the world through difficult times to a secure and prosperous future.
Today, as people have become ever more doubtful of the ability of the government to deal with our problems, we are increasingly drawn to single-issue groups and special interest organizations to ensure that whatever else happens our own personal views and our own private interests are protected.
This is a disturbing factor in American political life. It tends to distort our purposes because the national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together — and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)

Life , People , World , Dreams

“The azure lake is argent now
Beneath the pale moonshine:
I seek a sign of hope in heaven:
Fair Polestar! thou are mine.
A thousand other beacons blaze;
I follow thee alone…”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

"Midnight At Geneva".

Hope

“If we can open ourselves to ourselves and each other, as women, only then can we begin to fight for and create, in fact reclaim, not "Lesbian Nation" or "Amazon Nation"—let alone some false state of equality—but a real Feminist Revolution, a proud gynocratic world that runs on the power of women. Not in the male sense of power, but in the sense of a power plant—producing energy. And to each, that longing for, that right to, a great love filled in reality, for all women, and children and men and animals and trees and water and all life, an exquisite diversity in unity. That world breathed and exulted on this planet some twelve thousand years ago, before the patriarchy arose to crush it.”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

Going Too Far, p. 187.

Love , Life , Women , Men

“The scenery and costumes of 'The Wizard of Oz' were all made in New York — Mr. Mitchell was a New York favorite, but the author was undoubtedly a Chicagoan, and therefore a legitimate butt for the shafts of criticism. So the critics highly praised the Poppy scene, the Kansas cyclone, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, but declared the libretto was very bad and teemed with 'wild and woolly western puns and forced gags.' Now, all that I claim in the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' is the creation of the characters of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the story of their search for brains and a heart, and the scenic effects of the Poppy Field and the cyclone. These were a part of my published fairy tale, as thousands of readers well know. I have published fifteen books of fairy tales, which may be found in all prominent public and school libraries, and they are entirely free, I believe, from the broad jokes the New York critics condemn in the extravaganza, and which, the New York people are now laughing over. In my original manuscript of the play were no 'gags' nor puns whatever. But Mr. Hamlin stated positively that no stage production could succeed without that accepted brand of humor, and as I knew I was wholly incompetent to write those 'comic paper side-splitters' I employed one of the foremost New York 'tinkerers' of plays to write into my manuscript these same jokes that are now declared 'wild and woolly' and 'smacking of Chicago humor.' If the New York critics only knew it, they are praising a Chicago author for the creation of the scenic effects and characters entirely new to the stage, and condemning a well-known New York dramatist for a brand of humor that is palpably peculiar to Puck and Judge. I am amused whenever a New York reviewer attacks the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' because it 'comes from Chicago.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Letter to "Music and the Drama", The Chicago Record-Herald (3 February 1903)
Letters and essays

People , Books , School , Search

“As to the American [Civil] War it has manifestly ceased to have any attainable object as far as the Northerns are concerned, except to get rid of some more thousand troublesome Irish and Germans. It must be owned, however, that the Anglo-Saxon race on both sides have shown courage and endurance highly honourable to their stock.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (20 October 1862), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 559.
1860s

War , Courage

““At least Bharatanatyam is now world famous, with thousands of new votaries. What about Koodiyattam?….. I have done what I can. It has not been easy. One has to sacrifice a lot to learn Koodiyattam. How many persons will be ready for it these days? Will there be an audience capable of imbibing it? ”
-Shri. Māni Mādhava Chākyār to famous Bharatanatyam dancer Rukmini Dev Arundale, while latter visitited Guru at his residence”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Source: P.T. Narendra Menon, Kulapati of Koodiyattam, Sruti- India's premier Music and Dance magazine, August 1990 issue (71), p. 27.

World , Learning , Personality

“I got out of the bathroom of course. I locked the front door and pushed the big wardrobe up against the bathroom door. I thought it'd be good to be careful. A little too late, maybe.
I'm not leaving my apartment. I'm not gonna give it away. No. There's no reason I should.
The noise from the bathroom was the shattering of my porcelain toilet bowl.
They're in the bathroom. A lot. There's a lot of them. A bunch of sniffling snouts. A bunch of rats.
They're already chewing the wardrobe. I'm standing in my room, listening to their swarming.
Thousands of rats, in my apartment. All of them gnawing. I wait. Wait for them to get in. They'll be in here soon. It won't be long.
They're coming. Rats. My rats.
I'm waiting. What else can I do?”

András Petőcz (1959) Hungarian writer

RATS (1996)
András Petőcz: In Praise of the Sea (1999, ISBN 963 9101 51 6).
Prose

Waiting

“I have said, and I repeat, at the risk of appearing sacrilegious, that the gas chambers are a detail of the history of the Second World War. … If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what's called a detail.”

Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928) French right-wing and nationalist politician

Statement in Munich (5 December 1997), as quoted in The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 21 (2002) by the Institute for Historical Review, p. 3

War , People , Books , World

“There used to be an old joke in role-playing circles—it isn’t funny these days—that there were only a thousand real people in the UK—everybody else was a non-player character. Now it’s pretty much the reverse.”

Charles Stross book Halting State

Source: Halting State (2007), Chapter 33, “Elaine: Gentlemen and Players” (p. 272)

People

“Writing about the days of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51), Shihabuddin Al-Umari writes:
“The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon the infidels… Every day thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners… (that) the value at Delhi of a young slave girl, for domestic service, does not exceed eight tankahs. Those who are deemed fit to fill the parts of domestic and concubine sell for about fifteen tankahs. In other cities prices are still lower…” Probably it was so because Ibn Battuta while in Bengal says that a pretty Kaniz (slave girl) could be had there for one gold dinar (or 10 silver tankahs). “I purchased at this price a very beautiful slave girl whose name was Ashura. A friend of mine also bought a young slave named Lulu for two gold coins.”32…Umari continues, “but still, in spite of low price of slaves, 20000 tankahs, and even more, are paid for young Indian girls. I inquired the reason… and was told that these young girls are remarkable for their beauty, and the grace of their manners.””

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Battuta, Mahdi Husain, 235; Quaunah Turks, 155 n. ; Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580-81. (Shihabuddin al-Umri, Masalik-ul-Absar fi Mumalik-ul-Amar) quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 10

War , Beauty , Girl , Parting

“The first principle in race fusion is the opportunity to establish a home base in a country and a genuine love for that home. The home sense in the many peoples that have come to America is inseparable from the sense of the soil itself. Many immigrants have lived close to it, dug their hands into it, planted in it, watched their crops grow, and had a home stake around which cluster a thousand associations. Whatever there is of poetry in their lives is associated with the soil, and their worship is inseparable from it. Whatever there is heroic in their memories comes to them through it. In America it is not so. The majority of immigrants, with this land allegiance strong within them, find their way into crowded cities and unsightly industrial towns. They have little chance to plant and to harvest and to acquire a home stake; and when they do acquire it they cling to America. What do these men know, until perhaps it is too late, of the beauty of the expanse of America, and of the citizenship which gives them a partnership in national parks? What do they know of the traditions and achievements of Americans, inseparably linked with American soil? That allegiance of America which is part of real Americanization must somehow find a way of establishing affection for the soil.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Love , Men , People , Beauty

“Ziyauddin Barani voiced his opinion against the Hanafi school when he wrote as follows in his Fatwa-i-Jahandari: “If Mahmud… had gone to India once more, he would have brought under his sword all the Brahmans of Hind who, in that vast land, are the cause of the continuance of the laws of infidelity and of the strength of idolators; he would have cut off the heads of two or three hundred thousand Hindu chiefs. He would not have returned his Hindu-slaughtering sword to its scabbard until the whole of Hind had accepted Islam. For Mahmud was a Shafiite, and according to Imam Shafii the decree for Hindus is Islam or death, that is to say, they should either be put to death or accept Islam. It is not lawful to accept jiziya from Hindus who have neither a prophet nor a revealed book.””

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Fatwa-i-Jahandari, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

Death , Books , School , Law

“I'm a libertarian, which means I'm against the government doing almost anything. But citizens having arsenals? No, that is the kind of rough stuff I would like the government to get involved in…. It just seems the debate, — you know, they will not give an inch. There are many attempts to pass a law in states just requesting a limit of buying one gun a month, and it doesn't pass. People are like, "What about Christmas?" I mean, one gun a month. If you started when you were 18, by the time you were 60 that's over a thousand guns. I don't care how small your penis is, that should be enough guns.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Be More Cynical (2000)

People , Law , Time , Christmas

“I wish President Musharraf well, we want to work with him to bring greater balance in our own relations. But I have to be realistic enough to recognize the role that terrorist elements have played in the last few years in the history of Pakistan. Taliban was the creation of Pakistan extremists, the Wahabi Islam which has flourished, thousands and thousands of schools, the madrassas, were set up to preach this jihad based on hatred of other religions... and Pakistan is not a democracy in the sense that we know and you know.... We wish Pakistan success in emerging as a moderate Muslim state. We will work with President Musharraf... but we have to recognize what has happened.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

On Pakistan, as quoted in "Interview: Indian Prime Minister Singh" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072001916.html, The Washington Post (20 July 2005)
2001-2005

School , Religion , Democracy , History

“My first informed impression, and what I would like to achieve, I can perhaps only realize when I am impelled as in a vision. One of my figures, perhaps one from the Temptation, sang his strange song to me one night –.. We are playing hide-and-seek, we are playing hide-and-seek across a thousand seas, we gods.... when the skies are red in the middle of the night, when the skies are red at night. You cannot see us, you cannot see us but you are ourselves.... that is what makes us laugh so gaily... Stars are our eyes and nebulae our beards.... we have people's souls for our hearts. We hide ourselves and you cannot see us, which is just what we want.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), p. 19

God , People , Soul , Star

“Mathematical physics represents the purest image that the view of nature may generate in the human mind; this image presents all the character of the product of art; it begets some unity, it is true and has the quality of sublimity; this image is to physical nature what music is to the thousand noises of which the air is full…”

Théophile de Donder (1872–1957) Belgian physicist

as quoted by Ilya Prigogine in his Autobiography http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1977/prigogine-autobio.html given at the occasion of Prigogine's 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Art , Music , Mathematics , Nature

“A work will be treated as art within a certain circle – that is, within the circle of let's say ten thousand people. There are about ten thousand in the world today who are prepared to take it on face value if you present anything to them as art, they deal with it straight on as art and tell you whether it stimulates them, moves them, or not. Some of them might even buy it... Anyway, it seems to me that within that ring of ten thousand, fortunately, that sincerity issue [the issue: is something art or not] is over. The reason why that issue failed is that it became obvious no one would live a life of art, a life of poverty, just to pull somebody's legs. In other words, there were compensating sacrifices for what people did.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 18

Life , People , World , Art

“I am not […] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. […] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness", p. 282
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Lie , Nature , Time

“Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
In which a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics (1961), lines 9–16

Love , Marriage , Lovers , Kiss

“The last two thousand years have seen the development of elaborate monotheistic theologies; but in the process their single God has broken into many, or at least has assumed a number of distinct and indeed sometimes actively hostile forms; and their nominal universalism has degenerated into competition for the possession of absolute truth.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)

God , Hostility , Truth , Universe

“The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5

World , Exercises , Parting

“Hindus temples have been under unprecedented attack for a thousand years. They suffered desecration, destruction, confiscation of their property and iniquitous taxation under the Muslim rulers. Under the British, the more physical methods ceased but fiscal methods were adopted for undermining "heathenism". A large part of the land and properties of the temples were taken away under all kinds of pretexts. After independence, the temples have fared no better. Their properties have not been restored to them and they continue to exist in deepening poverty. In the South where there are still many noble structures left, the temples are under the control of a Government which takes pride in being "secular", and whose secularity is thoroughly anti-Hindu in orientation.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Suffering , Parting

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) pages 133-134 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=156&itemID=F944&viewtype=image
The last sentence of the first paragraph is often quoted in isolation to make Darwin seem heartless.
The Descent of Man (1871)

Life , Men , Marriage , Health

“We think we are smart because we have been flying for about sixty years. Birds and bees and butterflies have been flying for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Charles Kettering (1876–1958) American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 140 patents

as quoted in Boss Ket (1961) by Rosamond McPherson Young p. 194

Bird , Thinking , Bee , Flying

“A single Voltaire will do more honor to France than a thousand pedants, a thousand false wits, a thousand great men of inferior order.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 48 from Frederick to Voltaire (1740-01-06)

Men , Falseness

“SHALMANESER That real cool piece of hardware up at the GT tower. They say he's apt to evolve to true consciousness one day. Also they say he's as intelligent as a thousand of us put together, which isn't really saying much, because when you put a thousand of us together look how stupidly we behave.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (17) "Brighter Than A Thousand Men"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Intelligence

“Because Arizona has two things people will drive thousands of miles to see — Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest. They can't get there without roads.”

Carl Hayden (1877–1972) American federal politician

"Carl T. Hayden is Dead at 94; Arizonan in Congress 56 years", New York Times, January 26, 1972, pp. 40.
Said to Franklin D. Roosevelt when asked why Hayden was always interested in roads.

People

“America is no longer an obscure and inaccessible country. Our ships are in every sea, our commerce is in every port, our language is heard all around the globe, steam and lightning have revolutionized the whole domain of human thought, changed all geographical relations, make a day of the present seem equal to a thousand years of the past, and the continent that Columbus only conjectured four centuries ago is now the center of the world.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

World , Change , Past , Sea

“In AH 871 (AD 1466-67) he started for the conquest of Karnãl [Girnãr] which is now known as JûnãgaDh. It is said that this country had been in the possession of the predecessors of Rãi Mandalîk for the past two thousand years… Sultãn Mahmûd relied on the help of Allãh and proceeded there; on the way he laid waste the land of SoraTh… From that place the Sultãn went towards the temple of those people. Many Rajpûts who were known as Parwhãn, decided to lay down their lives, and started fighting with swords and spears in (defence) of the temple… Sultãn Mahmûd postponed the conquest of the fort to the next year… and returned to Ahmadãbãd.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Mahmûd BegDhã of Gujarat (AD 1458-1511) Junagadh (Gujarat)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

People , Way , Past , Help

“One day I rode in company with ‘Alã-ul-mulk and arrived at a plain called Tarna at a distance of seven miles from the city. There I saw innumerable stone images and animals, many of which had undergone a change, the original shape being obliterated. Some were reduced to a head, others to a foot and so on. Some of the stones were shaped like grain, wheat, peas, beans and lentils. And there were traces of a house which contained a chamber built of hewn stone, the whole of which looked like one solid mass. Upon it was a statue in the form of a man, the only difference being that its head was long, its mouth was towards a side of its face and its hands at its back like a captive’s. There were pools of water from which an extremely bad smell came. Some of the walls bore Hindî inscriptions. ‘Alã-ul-mulk told me that the historians assume that on this site there was a big city, most of the inhabitants of which were notorious. They were changed into stone. The petrified human form on the platform in the house mentioned above was that of their king. The house still goes by the name of ‘the king’s house’. It is presumed that the Hindî inscriptions, which some of the walls bear, give the history of the destruction of the inhabitants of this city. The destruction took place about a thousand years ago…”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Lahari Bandar (Sindh) . The Rehalã of Ibn Battûta translated into English by Mahdi Hussain, Baroda, 1967, p. 10.
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

History , Water , Change , Animals

“What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends?”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book One in 'Unwelcome Visitors', MG
The Master and Margarita (1967)

Love , World , Girl , Happiness

“We had a very respectable force, as to numbers; between eight and nine thousand, rank and file, upon the ground; but of these we attempted to select a particular corps to possess ourselves of the enemy's lines, partly by force, and partly by stratagem; but w r e could not make up the necessary number that was thought sufficient to warrant the attempt, which was five thousand, including the Continental and State troops. This body was to consist of men, who had been in actual service before, not less than nine months. However, the men were not to be had, and, if they could have been found, there was more against it than for it. Colonel Laurens was to have opened the passage by landing within the enemy's lines, and getting possession of a redoubt at the head of Easton's beach. If we had failed in the attempt, the whole party must have fallen a sacrifice, for their situation would have been such that there was no possibility of getting off.”

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

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men

“She leant upon her harp, and thousands looked
On her in love and wonder—thousands knelt
And worshipp'd in her presence—burning tears,
And words that died in utterance, and a pause
Of breathless, agitated eagerness,
First gave the full heart's homage: then came forth
A shout that rose to heaven; and the hills,
The distant valleys, all rang with the name
Of the Æolian Sappho—every heart
Found in itself some echo to her song.”

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

Sappho from The London Literary Gazette (4th May 1822) Poetic Sketches. 2nd Series - Sketch the First
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love , Tear , Distant , Heart

“Since September 11, 2001, I have often thought that perhaps it was fortunate for the world that the attackers targeted the World Trade Center instead of the Statue of Liberty, for if they had destroyed our sacred symbol of democracy I fear we as Americans would have been unable to keep ourselves from indulging in paroxysms of revenge of a sort the world has never seen before. If that had happened, it would have befouled the meaning of the Statue of Liberty beyond any hope of subsequent redemption — if there were any people left to care. I have learned from my students that this upsetting thought of mine is subject to several unfortunate misconstruals, so let me expand on it to ward them off. The killing of thousands of innocents in the World Trade Center was a heinous crime, much more evil than the destruction of the Statue of Liberty would have been. And, yes, the World Trade Center was a much more appropriate symbol of al Qaeda's wrath than the Statue of Liberty would have been, but for that very reason it didn't mean as much, as a symbol, to us. It was Mammon and Plutocrats and Globalization, not Lady Liberty. I do suspect that the fury with which Americans would have responded to the unspeakable defilement of our cherished national symbol, the purest image of our aspirations as a democracy, would have made a sane and measured response extraordinarily difficult. This is the great danger of symbols — they can become too "sacred."”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

An important task for religious people of all faiths in the twenty-first century will be spreading the conviction that there are no acts more dishonorable than harming "infidels" of one stripe or another for "disrespecting" a flag, a cross, a holy text.
Breaking the Spell (2006)

People , World , Fear , Faith

“We no longer have political movements. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such interests into collective goals is usually undermined by the fragmented individualism of our concerns. Laudable goals—fighting climate change, opposing war, advocating public healthcare or penalizing bankers—are united by nothing more than the expression of emotion. In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent whole. We must do better than this.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 3 : The Unbearable Lightness of Politics

War , Way , Imagination , Effort

“We have been civilized for a thousand millennia. We have histories of hundreds of those millennia. We have tried everything, Anarchism, with the rest. But I have not tried it. They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 13 (p. 385)

Life , History , Sun

“So many times, I've seen men and women get into trouble when they travel away from home because they believe that no one will ever know what they do when away. This is a lie, and it will always come back to haunt you. In Genesis 38, the Bible tells the story of Judah, who went on a business trip. When he arrived at a distant town, he saw a prostitute and approached her to sleep with her. But he didn't have any money to pay her, so he had to give her some personal items as a down payment. Of course, everyone knew those items belonged to him, and soon what he had done in secret, far away from home, was a public matter. And, again, we're reading about his hypocrisy thousands of years later. His actions have brought shame to his entire famiy for many generations. It's just not worth it. I remember an old tent preacher saying, sin will take you further than you want to go; cost you more than you want to pay; and keep you longer than you want to stay.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Letters from Home, Regal Books, March 2003, p. 20, ISBN 0830730583]

Women , Men , Money , Lie

“There is a certain cloud,
impregnated with a
thousand lightnings.
There is my body,
in it an ocean formed of his glory,
all the creation,
all the universes,
all the galaxies,
are lost in it.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Universe

“Janaki was one of the daughters of King Dahir of Sindh. She was captured along with her sister and sent to the Khalifa at Baghdad. When the Khalifa invited Janaki to share his bed, she lied to him that she had already been violated by Muhammad bin Qasim. Her sister supported her statement. The Khalifa ordered that Muhammad be sewed up in raw hide and sent to his court. Muhammad was already dead when the chest containing him arrived in Baghdad. Janaki accused the Khalifa of having killed one of his great generals without making proper enquiry. She said, 'The king has committed a very grievous mistake, for he ought not, on account of two slave girls, to have destroyed a person who had taken captive a hundred thousand modest women like us,… and who instead of temples had erected mosques, pulpits and minarets.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. I : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 211
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Women , Girl , Support , Sister

“You'll never learn to act in Hollywood. Not in a thousand years.”

Margaret Sullavan (1909–1960) actress

Lawrence J. Quirk, Child of Fate - Margaret Sullavan, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986, ISBN 0312514425, p. 77.

Learning

“In Plato's Republic, when the interlocutor of Socrates appears to bring certain plausible reasons to bear upon the mathematical sciences, to show that they are useful to human life, arithmetic for reckoning, distributions, contributions, exchanges, and partnerships, geometry for sieges, the founding of cities and sanctuaries, and the partition of land, music for festivals, entertainment, and the worship of the gods, and the doctrine of the spheres, or astronomy, for farming, navigation and other undertakings, revealing beforehand the proper procedure and suitable season, Socrates, reproaching him says: "You amuse me, because you seem to fear that these are useless studies that I recommend; but that is very difficult, nay, impossible. For the eye of the soul, blinded and buried by other pursuits, is rekindled and aroused again by these and these alone, and it is better that this be saved than thousands of bodily eyes, for by it alone is the truth of the universe beheld."”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Life , God , Truth , Fear

“A remarkable challenge to Milosevic unfolded in the street of Belgrade in December [1996], led by three politicians who banded together in a movement called Zajedno, or the Together Movement. For weeks, hundreds of thousands of Belgrade citizens braved subfreezing weather to call for democracy. But Washington missed a chance to affect events; except for one ineffectual trip to Washington, Zajedno had no contact with senior American government officials, and the Administrations sent no senior officials to Belgrade for fear that their visits would be used by Milosevic to show support. For the first time in eighteen months, Milosevic felt no significant American pressure, and turned back towards the extreme nationalists, including Karadzic, for support. His tactical skills saved him again, and within weeks, the Together Movement was together no more, as its leaders split among themselves.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 345

Fear , Democracy , Support , Chance

“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Speech at the Welsh Labour Party conference, Llandudno (15 May 1987)
This speech was extensively quoted in a Labour Party election broadcast during the 1987 general election. It was also famously used without attribution by U.S. Senator Joe Biden, although Biden had used and properly attributed the speech many times before.

Family , Thinking , Universe

“Now, you think it's a coincidence that on September 11, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life? We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life — I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a warning. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow. I think that's a way of Providence telling us, "I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?"”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Reaping the Fruits of the Moral Crisis, May 7, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_05_07hellewell.htm.
2009

Love , Life , Children , Way

“You live in a land that is compassionate and decent. Because we believe in the rights and dignity of our own citizenry, we are committed to defending the rights and dignity of people everywhere. America has liberated millions around the world from tyranny and terror. We’ve helped turn the tide against deadly disease in places like Africa. In our hearts we believe all are created equal under God. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is Almighty God’s gift to humanity. At home, there are thousands of platoons in the Army of compassion working to honor those beliefs. No matter what your career path, enlist. When you help another, you enrich your heart, and you strengthen the fabric of our collective goodness. Many of you have already made service a priority in your lives by volunteering during winter, spring, and summer breaks; and completing more than one-hundred community projects through Engaged Learning. I thank you for recognizing the timeless truth: of those to whom much is given, much is required.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

God , People , Truth , World

“Iran took dozens of Americans hostage in Tehran, murdered hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, in Beirut, and was responsible for killing and maiming thousands of American service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Beyond the Middle East, Iran attacks America and its allies through its global terror network. It blew up the Jewish community center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. It helped al-Qaeda bomb U. S. embassies in Africa. It even attempted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, right here in Washington, D. C. In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran's aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow. So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations. We must all stand together to stop Iran's march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

2010s, 2015, Address to the United States Congress (March 2015)

Women , Men , Hope , Communication

“Human nature is accused of much more selfishness than it really has; a thousand kindly emotions break in upon and redeem our daily and interested life.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life , Nature , Selfishness

“The historian…loaden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself (for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay; having much ado to accord differing writers and to pick truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth; curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties; a wonder to young folks and a tyrant in table talk, denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of virtue, and virtuous actions is comparable to him.”

Philip Sidney (1554–1586) English diplomat

Page 89.
An Apology of Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy (1595)

Truth , Age , World , History

“The area extending from the Himalayas in the north to the sea and a thousand yojanas wide from east to west is the area of operation of the King-Emperor.”

Chanakya book Arthashastra

Chakravarti-kshetra as described by Kautilya: Arthashastra 9:1:17 (tr. L.N. Rangarajan), quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p.457
Arthashastra

Sea