Quotes about timing
page 19

Pablo Picasso photo
Bert McCracken photo

“I kind of wanted to open it up a little bit more this time and kind of expose a little bit more of my vulnerable side. The most important thing for me was to share exactly how I felt because I'm sure there are thousands and thousands of people who can relate.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

On his music and lyrics relating to the audience, interview in Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times (November 5, 2004) "Whisper To a Scream The Used's Heartfeld Lyrics Are Half-Sung, Half-Shrieked", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PG Publishing Co.

Mark Twain photo

“"In God We Trust." Now then, after that legend had remained there forty years or so, unchallenged and doing no harm to anybody, the President suddenly "threw a fit" the other day, as the popular expression goes, and ordered that remark to be removed from our coinage.
Mr. Carnegie granted that the matter was not of consequence, that a coin had just exactly the same value without the legend as with it, and he said he had no fault to find with Mr. Roosevelt's action but only with his expressed reasons for the act. The President had ordered the suppression of that motto because a coin carried the name of God into improper places, and this was a profanation of the Holy Name. Carnegie said the name of God is used to being carried into improper places everywhere and all the time, and that he thought the President's reasoning rather weak and poor.
I thought the same, and said, "But that is just like the President. If you will notice, he is very much in the habit of furnishing a poor reason for his acts while there is an excellent reason staring him in the face, which he overlooks. There was a good reason for removing that motto; there was, indeed, an unassailably good reason — in the fact that the motto stated a lie. If this nation has ever trusted in God, that time has gone by; for nearly half a century almost its entire trust has been in the Republican party and the dollar–mainly the dollar. I recognize that I am only making an assertion and furnishing no proof; I am sorry, but this is a habit of mine; sorry also that I am not alone in it; everybody seems to have this disease.
Take an instance: the removal of the motto fetched out a clamor from the pulpit; little groups and small conventions of clergymen gathered themselves together all over the country, and one of these little groups, consisting of twenty-two ministers, put up a prodigious assertion unbacked by any quoted statistics and passed it unanimously in the form of a resolution: the assertion, to wit, that this is a Christian country. Why, Carnegie, so is hell. Those clergymen know that, inasmuch as "Strait is the way and narrow is the gate, and few — few — are they that enter in thereat" has had the natural effect of making hell the only really prominent Christian community in any of the worlds; but we don't brag of this and certainly it is not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the narrow gate.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Statements (c. December 1907), in Mark Twain In Eruption : Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men And Events (1940) edited by Bernard Augustine De Voto

Noam Chomsky photo
P. V. Narasimha Rao photo

“Every time I say anything, people seize on it for all kinds of meanings so I am uncomfortable with talking. At least this way, I can think about the answers and phrase them carefully.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

On his preference to give written replies to questions than give give oral interviews with the press, in: Vir Sanghvi The charges are baseless and I knew I had nothing to worry about http://www.rediff.com/news/1996/3009rao.htm, 1996.

Theodor W. Adorno photo

“Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

“Was bedeutet Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit” (1959)

Joan Baez photo
Hermann Grassmann photo
John Heyl Vincent photo

“At some time, here or hereafter, every account must be settled, and every debt paid in full.”

John Heyl Vincent (1832–1920) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 361.

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

Bede photo

“The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.”
Talis...mihi uidetur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passeium domum citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur.

Book II, chapter 13
This, Bede tells us, was the advice given to Edwin, King of Northumbria by one of his chief men, at a meeting where the king proposed that he and his followers should convert to Christianity. It followed a speech by the chief priest Coifi, who also spoke in favor of conversion.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)

Francis de Sales photo
Gustave Courbet photo

“To know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter, but a man as well; in short, to create living art – this is my goal. (Gustave Courbet, 1855) - note”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Courbet wrote this 'Realist manifesto' for the introduction to the catalogue of his independent, personal exhibition at the Pavilion of Realism in Paris, outside the 1855 Universal Exhibition. His text is echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos of those days
1840s - 1850s, Realist Manifesto', 1851/1855

Fredric Jameson photo
Barack Obama photo
Heath Ledger photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Harlan Ellison photo

“For a brief time I was here; and for a brief time I mattered.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

His entire afterword to The Essential Ellison (1987)
Also quoted in the death announcement made by his publicist (28 June 2018).

Muhammad bin Qasim photo

“On the receipt of this letter, Hijaj obtained the consent of Wuleed, the son of Abdool Mullik, to invade India, for the purpose of propagating the faith and at the same time deputed a chief of the name of Budmeen, with three hundred cavalry, to join Haroon in Mikran, who was directed to reinforce the party with one thousand good soldiers more to attack Deebul. Budmeen failed in his expedition, and lost his life in the first action. Hijaj, not deterred by this defeat, resolved to follow up the enterprise by another. In consequence, in the year AH 93 (AD 711) he deputed his cousin and son-in-law, Imad-ood-Deen Mahomed Kasim, the son of Akil Shukhfy, then only seventeen years of age, with six thousand soldiers, chiefly Assyrians, with the necessary implements for taking forts, to attack Deebul'… 'On reaching this place, he made preparations to besiege it, but the approach was covered by a fortified temple, surrounded by strong wall, built of hewn stone and mortar, one hundred and twenty feet in height. After some time a bramin, belonging to the temple, being taken, and brought before Kasim, stated, that four thousand Rajpoots defended the place, in which were from two to three thousand bramins, with shorn heads, and that all his efforts would be vain; for the standard of the temple was sacred; and while it remained entire no profane foot dared to step beyond the threshold of the holy edifice. Mahomed Kasim having caused the catapults to be directed against the magic flag-staff, succeeded, on the third discharge, in striking the standard, and broke it down… Mahomed Kasim levelled the temple and its walls with the ground and circumcised the brahmins. The infidels highly resented this treatment, by invectives against him and the true faith. On which Mahomed Kasim caused every brahmin, from the age of seventeen and upwards, to be put to death; the young women and children of both sexes were retained in bondage and the old women being released, were permitted to go whithersoever they chose… On reaching Mooltan, Mahomed Kasim also subdued that province; and himself occupying the city, he erected mosques on the site of the Hindoo temples.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 234-238

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Evelyn Waugh photo
Albert Camus photo

“Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.”

Seulement, il faut du temps pour être heureux. Beaucoup de temps. Le bonheur lui aussi est une longue patience.
A Happy Death (1971)

David Duke photo

“I don’t want to see this country resemble or look like or become like Mexico. Mexico is great to visit, I’ve been there a few times. I respect all peoples of the world.”

David Duke (1950) American White nationalist, white supremacist, writer, right-wing politician, and a former Republican Louisiana …

Podcast (4 July 2006) http://www.davidduke.com/mp3/dukeradio060704.mp3

Seymour Papert photo
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo
Wladyslaw Sikorski photo

“Today it is time for strong and courageous people because only they can achieve victory and rid the world of tyranny.”

Wladyslaw Sikorski (1881–1943) Polish military and political leader

in Kazimierz Ziobro Poseł na Sejm RP http://www.kazimierzziobro.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13:dnia-4-lipca-2012-roku-delegacja-solidarnej-polski-zoya-kwiaty-pod-pomnikiem-generaa-wadysawa-sikorskiego-podczas-uroczystoci-upamitniajcych-69-rocznic-jego-mierci-w-katastrofie-lotniczej-na-gibraltarze and Cytatybaza: Władysław Sikorski http://cytatybaza.pl/autorzy/wladyslaw-sikorski.html
Original: Dziś czas jest dla ludzi silnych i odważnych, ci bowiem tylko mogą uzyskać zwycięstwo i uwolnić świat od tyranii.

Bertrand Russell photo

“Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don’t know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery.”

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

Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894). Smith was a Quaker, thus the archaic use of "Thee" in this and other letters to her.
1890s

Paul Dirac photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”

St. 4.
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
Context: I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Slavoj Žižek photo
Norbert Wiener photo

“Since Leibniz there has perhaps been no man who has had a full command of all the intellectual activity of his day. Since that time, science has been increasingly the task of specialists, in fields which show a tendency to grow progressively narrower… Today there are few scholars who can call themselves mathematicians or physicists or biologists without restriction. A man may be a topologist or a coleopterist. He will be filled with the jargon of his field, and will know all its literature and all its ramifications, but, more frequently than not, he will regard the next subject as something belonging to his colleague three doors down the corridor, and will consider any interest in it on his own part as an unwarrantable breach of privacy… There are fields of scientific work, as we shall see in the body of this book, which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology; in which every single notion receives a separate name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.
It is these boundary regions which offer the richest opportunities to the qualified investigator. They are at the same time the most refractory to the accepted techniques of mass attack and the division of labor. If the difficulty of a physiological problem is mathematical in essence, then physiologists ignorant of mathematics will get precisely as far as one physiologists ignorant of mathematics, and no further. If a physiologist who knows no mathematics works together with a mathematician who knows no physiology, the one will be unable to state his problem in terms that the other can manipulate, and the second will be unable to put the answers in any form that the first can understand… A proper exploration of these blank spaces on the map of science could only be made by a team of scientists, each a specialist in his own field but each possessing a thoroughly sound and trained acquaintance with the fields of his neighbors; all in the habit of working together, of knowing one another's intellectual customs, and of recognizing the significance of a colleague's new suggestion before it has taken on a full formal expression. The mathematician need not have the skill to conduct a physiological experiment, but he must have the skill to understand one, to criticize one, and to suggest one. The physiologist need not be able to prove a certain mathematical theorem, but he must be able to grasp its physiological significance and to tell the mathematician for what he should look. We had dreamed for years of an institution of independent scientists, working together in one of these backwoods of science, not as subordinates of some great executive officer, but joined by the desire, indeed by the spiritual necessity, to understand the region as a whole, and to lend one another the strength of that understanding.”

Source: Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), p. 2-4; As cited in: George Klir (2001) Facets of Systems Science, p. 47-48

Ronnie Coleman photo

“I want to help the up-and-coming kids. A lot of times, kids don't have much to do in the summer time. When I was a kid I didn't do nothing. I want to get body building out there and it will start with the younger generation.”

Ronnie Coleman (1964) American bodybuilder

Raymond Linex (June 12, 1998) "Strong arm of the law - Arlington policeman sets sights on Mr. Olympia title", The Dallas Morning News, p. 1B.

Nguyễn Du photo

“Just as the lotus wilts, the mums bloom forth—
time softens grief, and winter turns to spring.”

Source: The Tale of Kiều (1813), Lines 1795–1796; quoted by Bill Clinton, in "Remarks at a State Dinner Hosted by President Tran Duc Luong of Vietnam in Hanoi" (17 November 2000) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=1030: "Just as the lotus wilts, the mums bloom forth; time softens grief; and the winter turns to spring."

Nicholas Roerich photo
James Tobin photo
Isaac Newton photo

“A good watch may serve to keep a recconing at Sea for some days and to know the time of a Celestial Observ[at]ion: and for this end a good Jewel watch may suffice till a better sort of Watch can be found out. But when the Longitude at sea is once lost, it cannot be found again by any watch.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Letter to Josiah Burchett (1721), quoted in Longitude (1995) by Dava Sobel, p. 60
Board of Longitude

Stan Lee photo
Adyashanti photo
Tacitus photo
Plato photo

“And when the father who begat it perceived the created image of the eternal gods, that it had motion and life, he rejoiced and was well pleased; and he bethought him to make it yet more nearly like its pattern. Now whereas that is a living being eternally existent, even so he essayed to make this All the like to the best of his power. Now so it was that the nature of the ideal was eternal. But to bestow this attribute altogether upon a created thing was impossible; so he bethought him to make a moving image of eternity, and while he was ordering the universe he made of eternity that abides in unity an eternal image moving according to number, even that which we have named time. For whereas days and nights and months and years were not before the universe was created, he then devised the generation of them along with the fashioning of the universe. Now all these are portions of time, and was and shall be are forms of time that have come to be, although we wrongly ascribe them unawares to the eternal essence. For we say that it was and is and shall be, but in verity is alone belongs to it: and was and shall be it is meet should be applied only to Becoming which moves in time; for these are motions. But that which is ever changeless without motion must not become elder or younger in time, neither must it have become so in past nor be so in the future; nor has it to do with any attributes that Becoming attaches to the moving objects of sense: these have come into being as forms of time, which is the image of eternity and revolves according to number. Moreover we say that the become is the become, and the becoming is the becoming, and that which shall become is that which shall become, and not-being is not-being. In all this we speak incorrectly. But concerning these things the present were perchance not the right season to inquire particularly.”

Plato book Timaeus

38b, as quoted by R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (1888)
Timaeus

José Saramago photo
Barack Obama photo
Jack McDevitt photo

“At night the sea is very loud,
And voices ride the tide.
At another time, in another place,
Beneath the silent moon,
We laughed together.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 30 (p. 279)

Alexis Carrel photo
Mark Twain photo

“Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:

Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilletantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper any time and see them marching majestically across the page,—and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. "Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:

Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiederherstellungsbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape,—but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help; but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere,—so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.”

A Tramp Abroad (1880)

Krist Novoselic photo

“I voted last week, and everything I voted for was defeated. I voted for less police station money and against adding more courtrooms. The guy I voted for, a congressman, lost big time because he's totally anti-military. He wanted to cut the CIA budget! He's really cool. But he lost.”

Krist Novoselic (1965) Croatian-American rock musician

As quoted in "Take The Money and Run", Sounds (27 December 1990), interviewed by Keith Cameron on 23 September 1990<sup> http://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9009kc/index.html</sup>

Max Tegmark photo
Thomas Paine photo
Adi Da Samraj photo
Socrates photo
Adolf Eichmann photo
Ferdinand Marcos photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“In the beginning of the year 1854 a new policy was inaugurated with the avowed object and confident promise that it would entirely and forever put an end to the Slavery agitation. It was again and again declared that under this policy, when once successfully established, the country would be forever rid of this whole question. Yet under the operation of that policy this agitation has not only not ceased, but it has been constantly augmented. And this too, although, from the day of its introduction, its friends, who promised that it would wholly end all agitation, constantly insisted, down to the time that the Lecompton bill was introduced, that it was working admirably, and that its inevitable tendency was to remove the question forever from the politics of the country. Can you call to mind any Democratic speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, down to the time of the Lecompton bill, in which it was not predicted that the Slavery agitation was just at an end; that "the abolition excitement was played out," "the Kansas question was dead," "they have made the most they can out of this question and it is now forever settled."”

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

But since the Lecompton bill no Democrat, within my experience, has ever pretended that he could see the end. That cry has been dropped. They themselves do not pretend, now, that the agitation of this subject has come to an end yet.
1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)

José Saramago photo

“Deep down, I don't create anything. I'm just someone who simply lifts a rock and exposes what's beneath it. It's not my fault that monsters come out some times.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Eu, no fundo, não invento nada. Sou apenas alguém que se limita a levantar uma pedra e a pôr à vista o que está por baixo. Não é minha culpa se de vez em quando me saem monstros.
Quoted in the article Literatura: Saramago doutor honoris causa da Universidade Autónoma Madrid. Published by Rádio Mirasado. (March 15th, 2007)

Georgy Zhukov photo
Mark Twain photo
Sarah Vaughan photo

“Interview, The New York Times, 1983”

Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990) American jazz singer

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“This independence is glorified as "academic freedom," … except that in the background, a discreet distance away, stands the state watching with a certain supervisory look on its face, making sure to remind everybody from time to time that it is the aim, the purpose, the essence of this whole strange process.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Diese doppelte Selbständigkeit preist man mit Hochgefühl als ›akademische Freiheit‹: ... nur daß hinter beiden Gruppen in bescheidener Entfernung der Staat mit einer gewissen gespannten Aufsehermiene steht, um von Zeit zu Zeit daran zu erinnern, daß er Zweck, Ziel und Inbegriff der sonderbaren Sprech- und Hörprozedur sei.
Anti-Education (1872)

Matthew Perry (actor) photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Klaus Kinski photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Willem de Kooning photo

“There is a time when you just take a walk.... you walk in your own landscape... It has an innocence that is kind of a grand feeling... Somehow I have the feeling that old man Monet might have felt like that, just simple in front of things, or old man Cézanne too... I really understand them now.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

(1980's)as quoted in 'A painter's testament: De Kooning in the Eighties', Robert Storr, Moma-website http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1997/dekooning/essay.html, reprinted in 1997
1980's

Salman Khan photo
Merlin Mann photo

“Make the time to be scared of more interesting things”

Merlin Mann (1966) American blogger

Inbox Zero theme statement http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/4995139700/theme
Websites, The KungFu Grippe Tumblr website

Henri Bergson photo
George Frideric Handel photo

“You have taken far too much trouble over your opera. Here in England that is mere waste of time. What the English like is something that they can beat time to, something that hits them straight on the drum of the ear.”

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) German, later British Baroque composer

Richard Alexander Streatfeild Handel (2005) p. 195, citing Anton Schmid Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1854) p. 29
In conversation with Gluck.

Muammar Gaddafi photo

“I am not going to leave this land. I will die as a martyr at the end. I shall remain, defiant. Muammar is Leader of the Revolution until the end of time.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Televised address to the nation, quoted in guardian.co.uk (22 February 2011) " Gaddafi urges violent showdown and tells Libya 'I'll die a martyr' http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/22/muammar-gaddafi-urges-violent-showdown?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487" by Ian Black
Speeches

Barack Obama photo
Diogenes of Sinope photo

“To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 40
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Barack Obama photo
Subcomandante Marcos photo

“In previous armies, soldiers used their time to clean their weapons and stock up on ammunition. Our weapons are words, and we may need our arsenal at any moment.”

Subcomandante Marcos (1957) Mexican activist

"The Movement of Movements" (2004) " The Hourglass of the Zapatistas http://books.google.com/books?id=gh052B6W1HYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=movement+of+movements&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sBSVT5CXC4OC8QSUzfSiBA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=In%20previous%20armies%2C%20soldiers%20used%20their%20time%20to%20clean%20their%20weapons%20and%20stock%20up%20on%20ammunition.%20Our%20weapons%20are%20words%2C%20and%20we%20may%20need%20our%20arsenal%20at%20any%20moment.&f=false"

Barack Obama photo

“The U. S. military has performed valiantly and brilliantly in Iraq. Our troops have done all that we have asked them to do and more. But no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war, nor settle the grievances in the hearts of the combatants.
It is my firm belief that the responsible course of action - for the United States, for Iraq, and for our troops - is to oppose this reckless escalation and to pursue a new policy. This policy that I've laid out is consistent with what I have advocated for well over a year, with many of the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and with what the American people demanded in the November election.
When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience, is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the President on another tried and failed policy opposed by generals and experts, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and many of the Iraqis themselves.
It is time for us to fundamentally change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back. And it is time to refocus America's efforts on the challenges we face at home and the wider struggle against terror yet to be won.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Floor Statement on Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 (30 January 2007)
2007

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Karl Marx photo

“For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.”

Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, pp. 628–629.
Grundrisse (1857/58)
Context: The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital…
The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i. e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour...
The mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.

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“Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.”

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

Mythopoeia (1931)

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Karl Marx photo

“Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Paraphrased and misattributed, actually from "Die Musik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihre Pflege: Methode der Musik" ("The Music of the Nineteenth Century, and its Culture") by Adolf Bernhard Marx: "Die Kunst ist stets und überall das geheime Bekenntnis und unsterbliche Denkmal ihrer Zeit." ("Art is always and everywhere the secret confession as well as the undying monuments of its time.").
Misattributed

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“The only time we can talk about death is while we’re alive, not afterwards.”

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 22 (Vintage 2003)

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“Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.”

Part II: Te Palinure Petens (p. 70)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)

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“Greek tragedy met her death in a different way from all the older sister arts: she died tragically by her own hand, after irresolvable conflicts, while the others died happy and peaceful at an advanced age. If a painless death, leaving behind beautiful progeny, is the sign of a happy natural state, then the endings of the other arts show us the example of just such a happy natural state: they sink slowly, and with their dying eyes they behold their fairer offspring, who lift up their heads in bold impatience. The death of Greek tragedy, on the other hand, left a great void whose effects were felt profoundly, far and wide; as once Greek sailors in Tiberius' time heard the distressing cry 'the god Pan is dead' issuing from a lonely island, now, throughout the Hellenic world, this cry resounded like an agonized lament: 'Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself died with it! Away, away with you, puny, stunted imitators! Away with you to Hades, and eat your fill of the old masters' crumbs!”

Mit dem Tode der griechischen Tragödie dagegen entstand eine ungeheure, überall tief empfundene Leere; wie einmal griechische Schiffer zu Zeiten des Tiberius an einem einsamen Eiland den erschütternden Schrei hörten "der grosse Pan ist todt": so klang es jetzt wie ein schmerzlicher Klageton durch die hellenische Welt: "die Tragödie ist todt! Die Poesie selbst ist mit ihr verloren gegangen! Fort, fort mit euch verkümmerten, abgemagerten Epigonen! Fort in den Hades, damit ihr euch dort an den Brosamen der vormaligen Meister einmal satt essen könnt!"
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 54

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