Quotes about timing
page 18

Malcolm Muggeridge photo

“I can say with truth that I have never, even in times of greatest preoccupation with carnal, worldly and egotistic pursuits, seriously doubted that our existence here is related in some mysterious way to a more comprehensive and lasting existence elsewhere; that somehow or other we belong to a larger scene than our earthly life provides, and to a wider reach of time than our earthly allotment of three score years and ten…It has never been possible for me to persuade myself that the universe could have been created, and we, homo sapiens, so-called, have, generation after generation, somehow made our appearance to sojourn briefly on our tiny earth, solely in order to mount the interminable soap opera, with the same characters and situations endlessly recurring, that we call history. It would be like building a great stadium for a display of tiddly-winks, or a vast opera house for a mouth-organ recital. There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may; some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us. This, anyway, has been the strongly held conviction of the greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists, through the Christian centuries, who have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid, and that the great drama of the Incarnation which embodies it, is indeed the master drama of our existence. To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to me to be untenable; and anyway I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim (1988)

Garry Kasparov photo

“We think about time as something not to waste, not as something to invest.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Part II, Chapter 7, MTQ: Material, Time, Quality, p. 93
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Claude Monet photo
Bryan Procter photo

“Touch us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently,—as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream.”

Bryan Procter (1787–1874) English poet

Touch us gently, Time, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare "Time has touched me gently in his race, And left no odious furrows in my face", George Crabbe, Tales of the Hall, Book xvii., The Widow.

Joseph Goebbels photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Galileo Galilei photo
Alexander Calder photo
Camille Paglia photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Meera Bai photo
Stig Dagerman photo
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo

“I wish life was not so short," he thought. "Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

"Alboin Errol", in The Lost Road (1987). Compare this with "The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne" by Geoffrey Chaucer

Morrissey photo

“I know I've reached the stage where other artists would bleach their hair or buy a fancy costume, but, inexcusably, I can only be me, which is a full-time occupation and causes terrible backaches.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "I’ll astonish you", interview by Len Brown, Details (March 1991).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Nikola Tesla photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Hermann Minkowski photo
Ennius photo

“where the Gauls stealthily, at the time of night when sleep falls on men, attacked the high citadel and of a sudden stained with blood walls and watchers.”
Qua Galli furtim noctu summa arcis adorti moenia concubia vigilesque repente cruentant.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Macrobius in Saturnalia, Book I, Chapter IV (tr. J. Elliott)

Carl Linnaeus photo
Stephen Hawking photo

“I regard [the many worlds interpretation] as self-evidently correct. [T. F.: Yet some don't find it evident to themselves. ] Yeah, well, there are some people who spend an awful lot of time talking about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. My attitude — I would paraphrase Goering—is that when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Heard in person by this contributor when Hawking showed-up in a Caltech physics class taught by Robert Christy in 1980 or '81; when asked about collapse of the state-vector he whispered to his assistant Chris (surname unknown) something at which point Chris stood up and said 'Stephen is paraphrasing Herman Göring by saying "When I hear the words 'Schrödinger's Cat' I reach for my gun."'.
Source: In a conversation with Timothy Ferris (4 April 1983), as quoted in The Whole Shebang (1998) by Timothy Ferris, p. 345 http://books.google.com/books?id=qjYbQ7EBAKwC&lpg=PA345&ots=F6VWymjiPx&dq=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&pg=PA345#v=onepage&q=%22reach%20for%20my%20revolver%22%20hawking%20-%22oft-made%22&f=false

Jonathan Edwards photo
John Taylor (Latter Day Saints) photo
Marcel Proust photo

“When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.And once again I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.”

Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir.<p>Et dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du morceau de madeleine trempé dans le tilleul que me donnait ma tante (quoique je ne susse pas encore et dusse remettre à bien plus tard de découvrir pourquoi ce souvenir me rendait si heureux), aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre.
"Overture"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Abraham Lincoln photo

“I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty. But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it. I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family — a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related — a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done — the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more. They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Muhammad al-Mahdi photo

“I am The Mahdi (the guided one), I am the Imam of the time, and I am the one who fills it (the Earth) with justice just as it was filled with injustice and tyranny.”

Muhammad al-Mahdi (869–941) 12th and last Imam in Twelver Shia Islam

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.52 p. 2
Religious-based Quotes

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach photo
Fabio Lanzoni photo
Amy Winehouse photo

“He left no time to regret,
Kept his dick wet,
With his same old safe bet.
Me & my head high,
And my tears dry,
Get on without my guy.”

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter

Back To Black
Song lyrics, Back To Black (2006)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“If it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time, then it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees its salvation in public opinion, this is to say private laziness, is a time that really will be killed: I mean that it will be struck out of the history of the true liberation of life. How reluctant later generations will be to have anything to do with the relics of an era ruled, not by living men, but by pseudo-men dominated by public opinion.”

Wenn man mit Recht vom Faulen sagt, er töte die Zeit, so muß man von einer Periode, welche ihr Heil auf die öffentlichen Meinungen, das heißt auf die privaten Faulheiten setzt, ernstlich besorgen, daß eine solche Zeit wirklich einmal getötet wird: ich meine, daß sie aus der Geschichte der wahrhaften Befreiung des Lebens gestrichen wird. Wie groß muß der Widerwille späterer Geschlechter sein, sich mit der Hinterlassenschaft jener Periode zu befassen, in welcher nicht die lebendigen Menschen, sondern öffentlich meinende Scheinmenschen regierten.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Charles Bukowski photo
Michael Jackson photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.””

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Justin Trudeau photo

“I’ve said many times that there isn’t a country in the world that would find billions of barrels of oil and leave it in the ground while there is a market for it.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Speaking about the Trans Mountain Pipeline, as quoted by The Guardian, Canada approves controversial Kinder Morgan oil pipeline https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/29/canada-approves-kinder-morgan-oil-pipeline-justin-trudeau (30 November 2016).
2016

Fred Hoyle photo
David Tennant photo
Hirohito photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“O, the times! O, the morals!”
O tempora! O mores!

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Speech I
In Catilinam I – Against Catiline (63 B.C)
Variant: O the times! O, the customs!

Christopher Hitchens photo
Robert Browning photo

“It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

From Cleon; regarding death and afterlife

Philibert de l'Orme photo
Eminem photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“Probably in time physiologists will be able to make nerves connecting the bodies of different people; this will have the advantage that we shall be able to feel another man's tooth aching.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 493
1940s

Warren Farrell photo
Joseph Heller photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Albert Schweitzer photo

“Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Again and again their will-to-live becomes, as it were, intoxicated: spring sunshine, opening flowers, moving clouds, waving fields of grain — all affect it. The manifold will-to-live, which is known to us in the splendid phenomena in which it clothes itself, grasps at their personal wills. They would fain join their shouts to the mighty symphony which is proceeding all around them. The world seem beauteous…but the intoxication passes. Dreadful discords only allow them to hear a confused noise, as before, where they had thought to catch the strains of glorious music. The beauty of nature is obscured by the suffering which they discover in every direction. And now they see again that they are driven about like shipwrecked persons on the waste of ocean, only that the boat is at one moment lifted high on the crest of the waves and a moment later sinks deep into the trough; and that now sunshine and now darkening clouds lie on the surface of the water.
And now they would fain persuade themselves that land lies on the horizon toward which they are driven. Their will-to-live befools their intellect so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like to see it. It forces this intellect to show them a map which lends support to their hope of land. Once again they essay to reach the shore, until finally their arms sink exhausted for the last time and their eyes rove desperately from wave to wave. …
Thus it is with the will-to-live when it is unreflective.
But is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we either drift aimlessly through lack of reflection or sink in pessimism as the result of reflection? No. We must indeed attempt the limitless ocean, but we may set our sails and steer a determined course.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

Malcolm X photo
Thomas Paine photo

“I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spend in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Last will (1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly Review https://books.google.com/books?id=PtlBAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA398&lpg=PA398&dq=%22Let+me+have+none+of+your+Popish+stuff%22&source=bl&ots=XKTgMyyfOF&sig=N-KTteQDfZyKQaQA0yyMGyHkBvU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBhM3xmcrLAhXonIMKHSBLCcoQ6AEIIjAD#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20me%20have%20none%20of%20your%20Popish%20stuff%22&f=false, Volume 31, pp. 398&ndash;399
1800s

Ronald Reagan photo

“We're going forward with research on a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two hours.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

State of the Union address http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/20486a.htm, , quoted in [1986-03-05, Michael Kilian, Hypersonic flight just a hyperbolic Reagan rhapsody, The Evening Independent, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19860305&id=bmJQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t1kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4836,1112899]
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Georges St. Pierre photo

“I have to paint fast on television because of the limited time, but I don't want people to see what I'm showing them as work, something to worry and fret over. This is supposed to be fun.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

Judi Hunt (November 23, 1991) "Disciples of The Bob Ross Technique Find Joy in Learning They Can Paint", The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p. C1.

Paul Celan photo
Yoshida Shoin photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Galileo Galilei photo

“It now remains that we find the amount of time of descent through the channel. This we shall obtain from the marvelous property of the pendulum, which is that it makes all its vibrations, large or small, in equal times. This requires, once and for all, that two or three or four patient and curious friends, having noted a fixed star that stands against some fixed marker, taking a pendulum of any length, shall go counting its vibrations during the whole time of return of the fixed star to its original point, and this will be the number of vibrations in 24 hours. From the number of these we can find the number of vibrations of any other pendulums, longer or shorter, at will, so that if for example those counted by us in 24 hours were 234,567, then taking another shorter pendulum with which one counts 800 vibrations while another counts 150 of the longer pendulum, we already have, by the golden rule, the number of vibrations for the whole time of 24 hours; and if we want to know the time of descent through the channel, we can easily find not only the minutes, seconds, and sixtieths of seconds, but beyond that as we please. It is true that we can pass a more exact measure by having observed the flow of water through a thin passage, for by collecting this and having weighed what passes in one minute, for example, then by weighing what passes in the time of descent through the channel we can find the most exact measure and quantity of this time, especially by making use of a balance so precise as to weigh one sixtieth of a grain.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Letter to Giovanni Battista Baliani (1639)

Robert Browning photo

“Was there nought better than to enjoy?
No feat which, done, would make time break,
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due?
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Dis aliter visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

William Moulton Marston photo
Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo
Claude Monet photo

“There are the most amusing things everywhere [in The Netherlands]. Houses of every colour, hundreds of windmills and enchanting boats, extremely friendly Dutchmen who almost all speak French…. I have not had time to visit the museums, I wish to work first of all and I'll treat myself to that later.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in a letter to Camille Pissarro, 17 June 1871; first part cited in: Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001 http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012200101_01/_van012200101_01_0012.php Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 2001. p. 140; second part cited in: Ann Dumas, ‎Denver Art Museum, ‎High Museum of Art (2007), Inspiring Impressionism: : the Impressionists and the art of the past. p. 181
1870 - 1890

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Angelus Silesius photo
Albert Pujols photo

“I consider myself a line drive hitter with power. I just try to put my best swing on the ball every time.”

Albert Pujols (1980) Dominican-American baseball player

When asked what type of hitter he would consider himself to be. http://sports.ign.com/articles/709/709384p1.html

Ozzy Osbourne photo
Eugene O'Neill photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo

“There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live – I have no use for the sour-faced man – and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Talk to schoolchildren in Oyster Bay, Christmastime (1898), as quoted in The Bully Pulpit : A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations (2002) by H. Paul Jeffers, p. 22
1890s

Margaret Thatcher photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Aaliyah photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“Out of infinite longings rise
finite deeds like weak fountains,
falling back just in time and trembling.
And yet, what otherwise remains silent,
our happy energies—show themselves
in these dancing tears.”

Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen
endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen,
die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen.
Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen,
unsere fröhlichen Kräfte—zeigen
sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.
Initiale (Initial) (as translated by Cliff Crego)
Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (1902)

Napoleon I of France photo

“I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Letter to Sheikh El-Messiri, (28 August 1798); published in Correspondance Napoleon edited by Henri Plon (1861), Vol.4, No. 3148, p. 420

Aristides de Sousa Mendes photo

“At a time when many men were cowards, he was a true hero to the West.”

Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954) Portuguese diplomat

Otto von Habsburg, quoted in The Independent, Sunday 17 October 2010
About

Mukta Barve photo

“I love theatre and films. And when you love something so passionately, don't you find time to indulge in those passions. There are many people who say that theatre has no money, the audience is dwindling etc., but I don't like to give excuses for not doing theatre. I decide on my schedule beforehand, and till date I've never had problems.”

Mukta Barve (1979) Indian actress

I don't like to give excuses for not doing Marathi theatre:Mukta Barve http://m.timesofindia.com/entertainment/marathi/movies/news/I-dont-like-to-give-excuses-for-not-doing-Marathi-theatre-Mukta-Barve/articleshow/18970947.cms

George Best photo

“…the Englishman, George Best, who was an amazing footballer in his day but at the same time he was a bum and a drunk – a bohemian. Because of his soccer art though, he had a royal funeral.”

George Best (1946–2005) British footballer

Dragoslav Šekularac,
quoted in interview with ['Get Out of Here, I am Sekularac', Prvoslav Vujcic, http://www.urbanbookcircle.com/get-out-of-here-i-am-sekularac-by-prvoslav-vujcic.html, Urban Book Circle, 2006-05-01, 2016-05-15]
About

Raymond Williams photo
Osamu Tezuka photo
Stefan Zweig photo
Tennessee Williams photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“No one, I think, can deny that the depression of the agricultural interest is excessive. Though I can recall periods of suffering, none of them have ever equalled the present in its instances. … the agricultural interest is suffering from a succession of bad harvest, accompanied, for the first time, by extremely low prices. That is a remarkable circumstance that has never before occurred—a combination that has never before been encountered. In old days, when we had a bad harvest we had also the somewhat dismal compensation of higher prices; but now, when the harvests are bad the prices are lower rather than higher…nor is it open to doubt that foreign competition has exercised a most injurious influence on the agricultural interests of the country. The country, however, was perfectly warned that if we made a great revolution in our industrial system, that was one of the consequences that would accrue. I may mention that the great result of the returns we possess is this, that the immense importations of foreign agricultural produce have been vastly in excess of what the increased demands of our population actually require, and that is why the low prices are maintained…That is to a great degree the cause of this depression.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech in the House of Lords on the state of agriculture (28 March 1879), reported in The Times (29 March 1879), p. 8.
1870s

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 91e

Stanley Kubrick photo

“The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Interviewed by Charles Reynolds, Popular Photography (1960)

Napoleon I of France photo

“Surely in a matter of this kind we should endeavor to do something, that we may say that we have not lived in vain, that we may leave some impress of ourselves on the sands of time.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

From an alleged Letter of to his Minister of the Interior on the Poor Laws. Pub. in The Press, Feb. 1, 1868.
Attributed

Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Harold Holt photo

“One mistake and you're gone. You just don't make that mistake. With time one's skill increases and one learns hunting tricks. With greater knowledge the dangers diminish. It is wonderful to be free, alone down there.”

Harold Holt (1908–1967) Australian politician, 17th Prime Minister of Australia

interview with journalist Nigel Muir in 1967, talking about the dangers of spearfishing
As prime minister
Source: The Life and Death of Harold Holt, p. 273.

Eckhart Tolle photo
Julius Streicher photo

“In all peoples where Jews have lived as tolerated people or do so today, they prove to be disturbers of the inner peace and thus the destroyers of naturally grown people's communities. The Old Testament, which as the Jews claim tells their history, is at the same time the history of the peoples that the Jews destroyed physically and spiritually. The Jew does not only prove to be the disturber of the natural development within the peoples. He is also the destroyer of peace between the peoples.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

In allen Völkern, in denen Juden als Geduldete lebten oder heute noch leben, erwiesen sie sich als Störer des inneren Friedens und damit als Vernichter natürlich gewordener Volksgemeinschaften. Das Alte Testament der Bibel, von dem die Juden behaupten, dass es ihre Geschichte enthalte, ist zugleich die Geschichte von Völkern, die von den Juden materiell und geistig zugrunde gerichtet wurden. Der Jude hat sich aber nicht allein als Störer der natürlichen Entwicklung in den Völkern erwiesen. Er ist auch der Vernichter des Friedens unter den Völkern.
Stürmer, October 17, 1940

C. N. R. Rao photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.”

Letter Eight (12 August 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Ronald Reagan photo

“Back in 1927, an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said that the American people would never vote for socialism but he said under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Speaks_Out_Against_Socialized_Medicine (1961 LP)
1960s

Claude Monet photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“It's time that we move from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Sound bite reported in <i>Time</i>, February 20, 2008. http://www.time.com/time/quotes/0,26174,1715169,00.html
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Max Horkheimer photo
Aurangzeb photo
Norman Cousins photo

“Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Human Options (1981)

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo