Quotes about today
page 4

“The terrorists today are much the same as those we fought in WW II.”

Bruce Willis (1955) American actor, producer, and musician

On Rita Cosby’s Sunday MSNBC program, November 14, 2005. http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=9949

“The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

August Spies (1855–1887) American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor

Cited in: Kenneth G. Alfers (1993) America's second century: readings in United States history since 1877. p. 43

Silence

“I also often hear the word 'evolution'. Repeatedly I am asked to explain how my painting evolved. To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was. Art does not evolve by itself, the ideas of people change and with them their mode of expression.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Paris 1923
As quoted by Marius de Zayas, in 'The Arts', New York, May 1923
Quotes, 1920's, "Picasso Speaks," 1923

People, Art, Idea, Change

“What we celebrate today is not a victory of party or of individuals. What we celebrate is a beginning as well as an end; a change as well as a restoration. A beginning to end poverty, and misery; a beginning to end ignorance and hopelessness; and a beginning to restore all that is good, beautiful and sublime in our lives as one people under God.”

Bukola Saraki (1962) Nigerian politician

Inaugural Address (2003)

God, People, Beauty, Change

“As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents. Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/2004/maathai-lecture.html (10 December 2004)

Women, Children, World, Beauty

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.”

Irena Sendler (1910–2008) Polish resistance fighter and Holocaust rescuer

Letter to the Polish Senate (2007), quoted in "Irena Sendler, Lifeline to Young Jews, Is Dead at 98" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/europe/13sendler.html?em&ex=1210824000&en=cecafcbe4079750b&ei=5087%0A by Dennis Hevesi in The New York Times (13 May 2008)

Secret, Help

“Japanese people today think of money, just money: Where is our national spirit today? The Jieitai must be the soul of Japan. … The nation has no spiritual foundation. That is why you don’t agree with me. You will just be American mercenaries. There you are in your tiny world. You do nothing for Japan. … I salute the Emperor. Long live the emperor!”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

Addressing the SPF Garrison at Ichigaya Camp during his failed coup attempt, as quoted at "Yukio Mishima" by Kerry Bolton at Counter Currents Publishing http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/01/yukio-mishima-2/; upon going back inside he is said to have commented to his followers: "I don't think they even heard me". Final address (1970)

Money, People, World, Soul

“I did not develop the PHP we know today. Dozens, if not hundreds of people, developed PHP. I was simply the first developer.”

Rasmus Lerdorf (1968) Danish programmer and creator of PHP

sitepoint.com http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/phps-creator-rasmus-lerdorf

People

“The struggle between the people and the hatred amongst them is being nurtured by very specific interested parties. It is a small, rootless, international clique that is turning the people against each other, that does not want them to have peace. It is the people who are at home both nowhere and everywhere, who do not have anywhere a soil on which they have grown up, but who live in Berlin today, in Brussels tomorrow, Paris the day after that, and then again in Prague or Vienna or London, and who feel at home everywhere. [Man in audience shouts 'Jews!'] They are the only ones who can be addressed as international elements, because they conduct their business everywhere, but the people cannot follow them. The people are bounded to their soil, bounded to its fatherland, bounded to the possibilities of life that the state, the nation, offers.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

A speech at the Siemens Dynamo Works in Berlin (10 November 1933) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/hitler_audio.shtml 1930s

Life, People, Peace, Feeling

“You don’t know how to handle anything today, because you have to go to jail to get some press or fall down drunk.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

October 26, 2007. The Washington Blade.

“We are joined today by inspiring entrepreneurs from more than 120 countries and many from across Africa. And all of you embody a spirit that we need to take on some of the biggest challenges that we face in the world -- the spirit of entrepreneurship, the idea that there are no limits to the human imagination; that ingenuity can overcome what is and create what needs to be. And everywhere I go, across the United States and around the world, I hear from people, but especially young people, who are ready to start something of their own -- to lift up people’s lives and shape their own destinies. And that’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and new businesses, new ways to deliver basic services, new ways of seeing the world -- it’s the spark of prosperity. It helps citizens stand up for their rights and push back against corruption. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don’t see a future for themselves. Entrepreneurship means ownership and self-determination, as opposed to simply being dependent on somebody else for your livelihood and your future. Entrepreneurship brings down barriers between communities and cultures and builds bridges that help us take on common challenges together. Because one thing that entrepreneurs understand is, is that you don't have to look a certain way, or be of a certain faith, or have a certain last name in order to have a good idea.”

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

Remarks by President Obama at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at United Nations Compound in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-global-entrepreneurship-summit 2015

People, World, Faith, Way

“We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain.”

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

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Pain, Children, Education, Feeling

“In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn’t do well. They’d get bad openings. You cannot compare the playing strength, you can only talk about natural ability. Memorization is enormously powerful. Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca, and especially against the players of the previous century, like Morphy and Steinitz. Maybe they would still be able to outplay the young kid of today. Or maybe not, because nowadays when you get the opening advantage not only do you get the opening advantage, you know how to play, they have so many examples of what to do from this position. It is really deadly, and that is why I don’t like chess any more.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, October 16 2006 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_35_3.MP3 2000s

Nature, Dependency, Dead

“Yes [death has become a taboo]. Today people want to avoid the subject and hide the deaths that happen around them. It is as if the world were a hotel where the dead usually disappear at night, without any guest being able to notice their presence. While movies and television address death, they do not touch the fundamental point of finitude. The deaths are false, the good guys get shot and come back to life. It's another way of treating death as unreal.”

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

ÉPOCA Interview (in Portuguese) http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Epoca/0,6993,EPT1061569-1666-2,00.html, São Paulo, 2005.

Life, Death, People, World

“The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust.”

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

Reverence for Life (1969)

People, Way

“All I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy five by me, once Hokusai, today Gwakyo Rojin, the old man mad about drawing.”

Hokusai (1760–1849) Japanese artist

On one of his pseudonom, Gyakyo Rojin. He may have said the above in his late life definitely, since he began to use the name Gwakyo Rojin in 1843.
Attributed

Age, Nature, Bird, Fish

“I believe we are today crossing the Rubicon, Mr Chairman. In South Africa there can be no turning back. I have a manifesto for the future of our country and we must engage in positive action in the months and years that lie ahead.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

From his National Party Congress Speech in Durban on 15 August 1985

Lie, Future, Country

“This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation — the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.”

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

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

People, Hope, Feeling, History

“In the late Middle Ages there were, no doubt, many persons in monasteries and convents who had no business there and should have been out in the world earning an honest living, but today it may very well be that there are many persons trying to earn a living in the world and driven by failure into mental homes whose true home would be the cloister.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 73
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Age, World, Home, Failure

“I confess today in good faith that I am angry with myself for having formerly seen in a bad light, within the revolutionary government, Robespierre and Saint-Just. I believe that these two men were better on their own than all the revolutionaries together.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

Je confesse aujourd'hui de bonne foi que je m'en veux d'avoir autrefois vu en noir, et le gouvernement révolutionnaire et Robespierre et Saint-Just. Je crois que ces hommes valaient mieux à eux seuls que tous les révolutionnaires ensemble.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 69, 27082 2892-7]
On Maximilien de Robespierre

Men, Faith, Light

“I've never set out to teach anyone anything. It's been more of an expression of my views and feelings than sitting down and deciding "What is today's message?" And I do think that, although I never, again, sat down consciously and thought about this, I do think judging, even for my own daughter, that children respond to that than to "thought for the day."”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

Interview by Lizo Mzimba (February 2003) 
2000s

Children, Feeling, Thinking, Daughters

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”

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

Campaign rally on Memorial Day, New Mexico (26 May 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/studentnews/05/26/transcript.tue/ 2008

Sense, Strong, Memory

“For decades, this vision stood in sharp contrast to life on the other side of an Iron Curtain. For decades, a contest was waged, and ultimately that contest was won -- not by tanks or missiles, but because our ideals stirred the hearts of Hungarians who sparked a revolution; Poles in their shipyards who stood in Solidarity; Czechs who waged a Velvet Revolution without firing a shot; and East Berliners who marched past the guards and finally tore down that wall. Today, what would have seemed impossible in the trenches of Flanders, the rubble of Berlin, or a dissident’s prison cell -- that reality is taken for granted. A Germany unified. The nations of Central and Eastern Europe welcomed into the family of democracies. Here in this country, once the battleground of Europe, we meet in the hub of a Union that brings together age-old adversaries in peace and cooperation. The people of Europe, hundreds of millions of citizens -- east, west, north, south -- are more secure and more prosperous because we stood together for the ideals we share. And this story of human progress was by no means limited to Europe. Indeed, the ideals that came to define our alliance also inspired movements across the globe among those very people, ironically, who had too often been denied their full rights by Western powers. After the Second World War, people from Africa to India threw off the yoke of colonialism to secure their independence. In the United States, citizens took freedom rides and endured beatings to put an end to segregation and to secure their civil rights. As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies, and Asian nations showed that development and democracy could go hand in hand.”

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

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Life, War, People, Age

“Since many of today’s best-known manufacturers no longer produce products and advertise them, but rather buy products and “brand” them, these companies are forever on the prowl for creative new ways to build and strengthen their brand images.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999

Way

“I work a lot but don't seem to finish. That is, I hope what I am doing means something because I don't know what I am doing. It's strange and terrible but I feel calm. Today I worked non-stop for six hours on a sculpture and I don't know what the result is... Planes upon planes, sections of muscles, of a face and then? And the total effect? Does what I create live? Where will I end up?”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Boccioni's quote, from an undated letter to Gino Severini (probably July or August 1912, or November); as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008.
1912

Hope, Feeling

“If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for 310 years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

"Twenty million black people in prison," in Malcolm X: The Last Speeches, p. 51

People, Dreams, Strong, Time

“The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions…. Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today…. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-102 (26 June 2003).

Search, Freedom, Personality

“Tchaikovsky thought of committing suicide for fear of being discovered as a homosexual, but today, if you are a composer and not homosexual, you might as well put a bullet through your head.”

Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) Russian art critic

In Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), 260:2

Fear, Suicide

“But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -– regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. That is our choice. Today, we affirm hope.”

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

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

Children, Fear, Faith, Hope

“I think basically the youth of today are just having so many problems and they are sort of confused…This is their method, of escaping…Just like I sleep to escape my problems.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1970s

Youth, Problem, Thinking, Sleep

“I am not interested in a long life. I am not afraid of these things. I don't mind if my life goes in the service of this nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Source: Speech, Bhubaneswar, India (October 30, 1984), quoted in "Death in the Garden," by William E. Smith, Time (November 12, 1984) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,926929-3,00.html.

Life

“[W]hen the President's visitors came to Guinea, we were all called on to go and entertain them. I've never seen a country that did what Sékou Touré did for artists. Even in South Africa today we are not nurtured like that.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in Denselow, Robin (16 May 2008)
Interview with Robin Denselow (May 2008)
Source: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2280144,00.html, Robin Denselow talks to African superstar and activist Miriam Makeba, The Guardian, 15, London, 16 May 2008, 18 November 2010

Country

“Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

First Tweet on Twitter, February 24, 2010 Twitter http://twitter.com/conanobrien The Tonight Show

Help

“I started selling my portraits. Sizing up my customer, I charged ten or twenty francs a caricature, and it worked like a charm. Within a month my clientele had doubled. Had I gone on like that I'd be a millionaire today. Soon I was looked up to in the town, I was 'somebody'. In the shop-window of the one and only frame-maker who could make out a livelihood in Le Havre, my caricatures were impudently displayed, five or six abreast, in beaded frames or behind glass like very fine works of art, and when I saw troops of bystanders gazing at them in admiration, pointing at them and crying 'Why, that's so-and-so!', I was just bursting with pride.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

after Monet's death
Source: Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 22 : About the first steps in his career

Art, Cry

“As the Holy Koran tells us: "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do today - to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

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

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

God, Truth

“Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

Truth, Time

“I am a libertine, but I am not a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am compelled to set my apology alongside my vindication, I shall therefore say that it might well be possible that those who condemn me as unjustly as I have been might themselves be unable to offset the infamies by good works as clearly established as those I can contrast to my errors. I am a libertine, but three families residing in your area have for five years lived off my charity, and I have saved them from the farthest depths of poverty. I am a libertine, but I have saved a deserter from death, a deserter abandoned by his entire regiment and by his colonel. I am a libertine, but at Evry, with your whole family looking on, I saved a child—at the risk of my life—who was on the verge of being crushed beneath the wheels of a runaway horse-drawn cart, by snatching the child from beneath it. I am a libertine, but I have never compromised my wife’s health. Nor have I been guilty of the other kinds of libertinage so often fatal to children’s fortunes: have I ruined them by gambling or by other expenses that might have deprived them of, or even by one day foreshortened, their inheritance? Have I managed my own fortune badly, as long as I have had a say in the matter? In a word, did I in my youth herald a heart capable of the atrocities of which I today stand accused?… How therefore do you presume that, from so innocent a childhood and youth, I have suddenly arrived at the ultimate of premeditated horror? No, you do not believe it. And yet you who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you do not believe it either: your vengeance has beguiled your mind, you have proceeded blindly to tyrannize, but your heart knows mine, it judges it more fairly, and it knows full well it is innocent.”

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher

This passage comes from a letter addressed to his wife. It was written during his imprisonment at the Bastille.
"L’Aigle, Mademoiselle…"

Life, Death, Children, Health

“Love and faith do not happen just with words alone. Living according to the Word is faith. The Bible is not just made up of holy words, but it is a message of miracles in which are fulfilled for me even today, and it is the guide for our lives. The Lord's Word is being delivered even today, and I will continue to carry out the work of the Lord everyday.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from the Wolmyeongdong Website http://wmd.god21.net/WolMyeongDong/Founder

Love, Faith

“The main sources of tension in today's world economy could be grouped under the following categories:
(i) the underdevelopment of a large part of world
(ii) competition between different economic systems
(iii) the passing of colonialism
(iv) economic instability, especially in primary markets, and
(v) national shortsightedness, especially in trade policy”

Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Dutch economist

Source: Shaping the world economy, 1962, p. 91

World, Parting

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”

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

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. 1, Part 1.

Fish

“Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy. Fourteen years ago, independently, without any pressure from outside, it made that decision in the interests of itself and interests of its people — of its citizens. This is our final choice, and we have no way back. There can be no return to what we used to have before. And the guarantee for this is the choice of the Russian people, themselves. No, guarantees from outside cannot be provided. This is impossible. It would be impossible for Russia today. Any kind of turn towards totalitarianism for Russia would be impossible, due to the condition of the Russian society.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Joint press conference with President George Bush in 2005, Slovakia http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050224-9.html 2000 - 2005

People, Way, Democracy, Decision

“As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human life. The American people have not had an opportunity to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged this issue.”

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

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Life, God, People, Idea

“And so you have to be practical in asking yourself how can you achieve the goals of equality and inclusion, but also recognize that the market system produces a lot of wealth and goods and services. And it also gives individuals freedom because they have initiative. And so you don't have to be rigid in saying it’s either this or that, you can say -- depending on the problem you're trying to solve, depending on the social issues that you're trying to address what works. And I think that what you’ll find is that the most successful societies, the most successful economies are ones that are rooted in a market-based system, but also recognize that a market does not work by itself. It has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis, and there has to be inclusion. Otherwise it’s not stable. And it’s up to you -- whether you're in business or in academia or the nonprofit sector, whatever you're doing -- to create new forms that are adapted to the new conditions that we live in today.”

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

2016, Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative Town Hall (March 2016)

Communication, Business, Problem, Thinking

“Intellectual property is the oil of the 21 century. Look at the richest men a hundred years ago; they all made their money extracting natural resources or moving them around. All today’s richest men have made their money out of intellectual property.”

Mark Getty (1960) British businessman

"Blood and Oil," The Economist (March 4, 2000), p. 68

Men, Money, Nature

“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

People, Peace, History, Communication

“Sometimes my sister and I dream of having a run-of-the-mill father. He would make coffee and toss salads. He would not prefer his work to us, and he would tell us instead: "How pretty you look, my dear, tell me what you did today." He would speak to us with words of affectionate banality.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

Quote About

Dreams, Coffee, Sister

“Nababan: You mentioned about people to people…many Indonesians have high expectation that the US under your leadership is successful implementing the two-state solution today Israel-Palestinian conflict, is this a realistic expectation?
Obama: Well, it is gonna be very hard. Obviously, it's been the issue for 60 years through Democratic and Republic administrations through different governments of Israel. It is a…It is a…very difficult conflict, But I, I am going to work as hard as I can while I'm president, to make sure that we arrive to two-state solution, where Israel is secure as living side by side by a prosperous and successful Palestinian nation, and everybody in the region understands that this is the right thing to do, the question is how do we breakdown the barrier of trust, or the barrier of distrust, that exist between these countries…”

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

Interview with Putra Nababan in the White House https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38sFgxBhpkU (March 2010) 2010

People, Understanding, Question, Success

“Five decades ago today, Americans came to this honored place to lay claim to a promise made at our founding: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise -- those truths -- remained unmet. And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others.”

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

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Life, Women, Men, War

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.”

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

Interview published in Reason (1 July 1975)
1970s

Travel, Soul, Thinking, Sense

“Things are not going well for me. My chef at the Charité strongly disapproves of women students and took this means of showing it. About a hundred men (no women except myself) went round the wards today, and when we were all assembled before him to have our names written down, he called and named all the students except me, and then closed the book. I stood forward upon this, and said quietly, "Et moi aussi, monsieur." [And me, Sir. ] He turned on me sharply, and cried, "Vous, vous n'êtes ni homme ni femme; je ne veux pas inscrire vôtre nom."”

Anna Kingsford (1846–1888) English physician, activist and feminist

[You, you are neither man nor woman; I don't want to write your name.] I stood silent in the midst of a dead silence. Written to her husband in 1874; quoted in The Scalpel and the Butterfly by Deborah Rudacille (University of California Press, 2000), p. 35 https://books.google.it/books?id=BabamiCYEdUC&pg=PA35.

Women, Men, Books, Silence

“When truth is no longer free, freedom is no longer real: the truths of the police are the truths of today.”

Jacques Prevért (1900–1977) French poet, screenwriter

Attributed

Truth, Freedom

“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.

People, World, Courage, Strong

“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.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

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

Books, Dreams, Literature, Mathematics

“As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY."”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Quoted by many sites and blogs as "speech that Charlie Chaplin gave on his 70th birthday". Actually, a re-translation (from Portuguese-BR) of a text from the book "When I Loved Myself Enough" by Kim & Alison McMillen (2001). https://authorjoannereed.net/charlie-chaplin-self-love-poem-subtle-art-of-myth-busting/ Misattributed

Love, Truth, Suffering

“What’s our excuse today for not voting? How do we so casually discard the right for which so many fought? How do we so fully give away our power, our voice, in shaping America’s future? Why are we pointing to somebody else when we could take the time just to go to the polling places? We give away our power.”

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

2015, Bloody Sunday Speech (March 2015)

Time, Future

“Today, people struggle to find what's real. Everything has become so synthetic that a lot of people, all they want is to grasp onto hope.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

As quoted in Rolling Stone's The Immortals (2004) "Bob"

People, Hope

“My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, “Oh God, I've got to do this today.””

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

From his interview in The Guardian newspaper, 20th September 2008

Life, God, Feeling

“Should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Country

“New Domestic Animals. I want to have my lion and my eagle about me, that I may always have hints and premonitions concerning the amount of my strength or weakness. Must I look down on them today, and be afraid of them? And will the hour come once more when they will look up to me, and tremble?”

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

Sec. 250
The Gay Science (1882)

Animals

“Ian Smith lived an exemplary family life and in private was a down-to-earth, modest man. Ian Smith was not corrupt nor was he a megalomaniac. However whilst Ian Smith acted in what he thought were the best interests of then Rhodesia he made some disastrous political decisions as Prime Minister which directly contributed to the trauma that Zimbabwe is suffering from today… The policies of his Rhodesia Front party radicalized black nationalists and directly spawned the violent and fascist rule of Zanu PF.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

David Coltart, Opposition Politician and member of the Zimbabwe Parliament (House of Assembly and Senate) since 2000[citation needed]
About

Life, Family, Decision, Suffering

“Life today is an autopoietic, photosynthetic phenomenon, planetary in scale. A chemical transmutation of sunlight, it exuberantly tries to spread, to outgrow itself. Yet by reproducing, it maintains itself and its past even as it grows. Life transforms to meet the contingencies of its changing environment and in doing so changes that environment. By degrees the environment becomes absorbed into the processes of life, becomes less a static, inanimate backdrop and more and more like a house, nest, or shell—that is, an involved, constructed part of an organic being.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

What is Life? (1995)

Life, Change, Past, Parting

“Today is Christmas Eve. Whether or not Christ was born exactly on this date is not important. But chronological accuracy has nothing to do with tonight's event. A grand genius had been born who preached truth and love; who suffered because of his mission; and on account of his sufferings the world has become better, if not saved. Only it gives me nausea to see how some people abuse his name to commit numerous crimes. If he is in heaven, he will certainly protest!”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Letter to Blumentritt (24 December 1886)

Love, People, Truth, World

“The struggle of today, is not altogether for today — it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.”

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

1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)

Future

“The demographics of the country are going to change. It's inevitable. The Latino community in America is going to grow. If you stopped all immigration today, just by virtue of birth rates, this is going to be a browner country.”

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

NPR's Exit Interview With President Obama http://www.npr.org/2016/12/19/504998487/transcript-and-video-nprs-exit-interview-with-president-obama (19 December 2016) 2016

Communication, Birth, Change, Country

“As for your artificial conception of "splendid & traditional ways of life"—I feel quite confident that you are very largely constructing a mythological idealisation of something which never truly existed; a conventional picture based on the perusal of books which followed certain hackneyed lines in the matter of incidents, sentiments, & situations, & which never had a close relationship to the actual societies they professed to depict... In some ways the life of certain earlier periods had marked advantages over life today, but there were compensating disadvantages which would make many hesitate about a choice. Some of the most literarily attractive ages had a coarseness, stridency, & squalor which we would find insupportable... Modern neurotics, lolling in stuffed easy chairs, merely make a myth of these old periods & use them as the nuclei of escapist daydreams whose substance resembles but little the stern actualities of yesterday. That is undoubtedly the case with me—only I'm fully aware of it. Except in certain selected circles, I would undoubtedly find my own 18th century insufferably coarse, orthodox, arrogant, narrow, & artificial. What I look back upon nostalgically is a dream-world which I invented at the age of four from picture books & the Georgian hill streets of Old Providence.... There is something artificial & hollow & unconvincing about self-conscious intellectual traditionalism—this being, of course, the only valid objection against it. The best sort of traditionalism is that easy-going eclectic sort which indulges in no frenzied pulmotor stunts, but courses naturally down from generation to generation; bequeathing such elements as really are sound, losing such as have lost value, & adding any which new conditions may make necessary.... In short, young man, I have no quarrel with the principle of traditionalism as such, but I have a decided quarrel with everything that is insincere, inappropriate, & disproportionate; for these qualities mean ugliness & weakness in the most offensive degree. I object to the feigning of artificial moods on the part of literary moderns who cannot even begin to enter into the life & feelings of the past which they claim to represent... If there were any reality or depth of feeling involved, the case would be different; but almost invariably the neotraditionalists are sequestered persons remote from any real contacts or experience with life... For any person today to fancy he can truly enter into the life & feeling of another period is really nothing but a confession of ignorance of the depth & nature of life in its full sense. This is the case with myself. I feel I am living in the 18th century, though my objective judgment knows better, & realises the vast difference from the real thing. The one redeeming thing about my ignorance of life & remoteness from reality is that I am fully conscious of it, hence (in the last few years) make allowances for it, & do not pretend to an impossible ability to enter into the actual feelings of this or any other age. The emotions of the past were derived from experiences, beliefs, customs, living conditions, historic backgrounds, horizons, &c. &c. so different from our own, that it is simply silly to fancy we can duplicate them, or enter warmly & subjectively into all phases of their aesthetic expression.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 307
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Life, Books, Age, World

“If we legalised this state of lawlessness, then all those who are exposed to lawlessness are endangered. Today it is the Serbs and Montenegrins that suffer most from that, but tomorrow this could be the Albanians, too, and that is why, unless law and order is introduced and respected in the broader social and historical sense, this will be the interest of all of the inhabitants of Kosovo.”

Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006) Yugoslavian and Serbian politician

Kosovo Polje Speech (24 April 1987)

Law, Sense, Suffering

“Americans don't go around carrying guns with the idea they're using them to influence other Americans. There's no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

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

California Legislature Stunned By Invasion Of Armed "Black Panthers" https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&dat=19670503&id=ClcmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZP8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1072,5010951&hl=en, Gettysburg Times (3 May 1967) 1960s

Idea

“By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

As quoted in Contemporary Quotations (1969) by James Beasley Simpson

“Children have the right to grow up in a family with a father and mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child's development and emotional maturity. Today marriage and the family are in crisis. We now live in a culture of the temporary, in which more and more people are simply giving up on marriage as a public commitment. The revolution in mores and morals has often flown the flag of freedom, but in fact it has brought spiritual and material devastation to countless human beings, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

"Pope Francis declares union between man and woman 'at root of marriage' in blow to gay rights", by Adam Withnall, The Independent (18 November 2014) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-declares-union-between-man-and-woman-at-root-of-marriage-in-blow-to-gay-rights-9867561.html 2010s, 2014

Marriage, Children, People, Family

“Today, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself.”

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

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

“So today, let me say: Sisters and brothers of India — my confidence in what our nations can achieve together is rooted in the values we share. For we may have our different histories and speak different languages, but when we look at each other, we see a reflection of ourselves.”

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

2015, Address to the People of India (January 2015)

Confidence, History, Sister

“Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shop owners and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the “Homestead Act” that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, property-owning citizens-a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine.
I know we have with us today employee-owners from La Perla Plantation in Guatemala. They have a stake in the place where they work and a stake in the freedom of their country. When Communist guerrillas came, these proud owners protected what belonged to them. They drove the Communists off their land and I know you join me in saluting their courage.
In this century, the United States has evolved into a great industrial power. Even though they are now, by and large, employees, our working people still benefit from property ownership. Most of our citizens own the homes in which they reside. In the marketplace, they benefit from direct and indirect business ownership. There are currently close to 10 million self-employed workers in the U. S.-nearly 9 percent of total civilian employment. And, millions more hope to own a business some day. Furthermore, over 47 million individuals reap the rewards of free enterprise through stock ownership in the vast number of companies listed on U. S. stock exchanges.
I can’t help but believe that in the future we will see in the United States and throughout the western world an increasing trend toward the next logical step, employee ownership. It is a path that befits a free people.”

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

Speech on Project Economic Justice http://www.cesj.org/about-cesj-in-brief/history-accomplishments/pres-reagans-speech-on-project-economic-justice/ (The White House, 3 August 1987) 1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

People, World, Law, Dreams

“If God were alive today, he would have to be an atheist, because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

God, Time

“We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.”

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

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Fight

“Listening to a cultivated person of today who jokes and almost boasts of his scientific ignorance is as sad as listening to a scientist who boasts of not having read any poem.”

Carlo Rovelli (1956) Italian physicist

Il Sole 24 Ore cultural supplement, October 17, 2010.

Sadness, Reading, Personality

“You always hear people say that philosophy makes no progress and that the same philosophical problems which were already preoccupying the Greeks are still troubling us today. But people who say that do not understand the reason why it has to be so. The reason is that our language has remained the same and always introduces us to the same questions…. I read: "philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got,…". What a strange situation. How extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or that we could not get any further! Was it because Plato was so extremely clever?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 15e

People, Understanding, Question, Problem

“When you read Genesis, you find that it was Adam who was given the specific instruction not to eat the fruit of the tree. You see, Adam was created first, and God had ordained that he was to be the head of his family. He then gave Adam instruction as to what was expected of him. Adam, of course, would've told Eve, because she was really under his headship. Therefore, when Eve took the fruit, Adam shouldn't have joined her. He should've gone directly to God and asked for a solution. Instead, he joined his wife and brought sin and death into the world. You know, this is a lesson we need to learn today about men taking the leadership role in their families.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Did Adam have a Bellybutton?: And other tough questions about the Bible (2000)

Death, Men, God, World

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Palm Sunday

"Thoughts of a Free Thinker", commencement address, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (26 May 1974)
Palm Sunday (1981)

People, Disease, Communication, Loneliness

“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Not found in Jefferson's writings. http://www.tcfrank.com/essays/Check_It_Yourself Misattributed

History

“But we are here today because we know we cannot be complacent. For history travels not only forwards; history can travel backwards, history can travel sideways. And securing the gains this country has made requires the vigilance of its citizens. Our rights, our freedoms -- they are not given. They must be won. They must be nurtured through struggle and discipline, and persistence and faith. And one concern I have sometimes during these moments, the celebration of the signing of the Civil Rights Act, the March on Washington -- from a distance, sometimes these commemorations seem inevitable, they seem easy. All the pain and difficulty and struggle and doubt -- all that is rubbed away. And we look at ourselves and we say, oh, things are just too different now; we couldn’t possibly do what was done then -- these giants, what they accomplished. And yet, they were men and women, too. It wasn’t easy then. It wasn’t certain then. Still, the story of America is a story of progress. However slow, however incomplete, however harshly challenged at each point on our journey, however flawed our leaders, however many times we have to take a quarter of a loaf or half a loaf -- the story of America is a story of progress. And that’s true because of men like President Lyndon Baines Johnson.”

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

Remarks by the President at LBJ Presidential Library Civil Rights Summit at Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas on April 10, 2014. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/10/remarks-president-lbj-presidential-library-civil-rights-summit 2014

Women, Men, Pain, Faith

“This striving becomes understood completely as an end in itself—to such an extent that it appears as fully outside the normal course of affairs and simply irrational, at least when viewed from the perspective of the "happiness" or "utility" of the single individual. Here, people are oriented to acquisition as the purpose of life; acquisition is no longer viewed as a means to the end of satisfying the substantive needs of life. Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-loving dispositions experience this situation as an absolutely meaningless reversal of a "natural" condition (as we would say today). Yet this reversal constitutes just as surely a guiding principle of [modern] capitalism as incomprehension of this new situation characterizes all who remain untouched by [modern] capitalism's tentacles.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

Love, Life, People, Nature

“It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation.”

C.G. Jung book Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), p. 57

Knowledge

“Look these bastards in the eyes, and if anyone attacks you, already decide who will be the one to disconnect the railing where you are, and beat the hell out of them, the no-good bastards! And if you don't have a gun, every one of them has one gun, two guns, maybe three guns. In self-defense, if they attack you, take their goddamn guns from them and use their guns on them! In self-defense. Giuliani is known for taking his police and sending them off in riots. If any one of these bastards riots here today, you take their nightstick the way they did brother Abner Louima and ram it up their behind and jam it down their damn throats!”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad (1948–2001) American activist

Million Youth March (5 September 1998), quoted in The Village Voice (13 October 1998) "The Hunt for Khallid Abdul Muhammad" by Peter Noel

Way, Hell

“The thing that we need in the world today is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and to be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they're never caught up with. And some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Rediscovering Lost Values (1954)

Women, Men, People, World

“Three days: Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday, I know,
Yet if the past were cancelled within the here and now
And then the future hidden, I could regain that Day
Which I, before I was, had lived in God's own way.”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

God, Way, Past, Future

“Will the world enter a new phase of isolation, nationalization, ideologization? As a paradoxical counterplay to the onset of globalization? That would require new architecture or author architecture to degenerate into a kind of "parallel architecture," which it already is to a certain extent today.”

Jacques Herzog (1950) Swiss architect

places.designobserver.com http://places.designobserver.com/feature/an-interview-with-jacques-herzog/32118/.

World

“The Chinese are industrious, courageous, honest, and intelligent. They created the splendid ancient Chinese civilization. And today, they're firmly committed to the path of peaceful development and are making continuous progress in the modernization drive by carrying out the reform and opening up program.”

Hu Jintao (1942) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

2000s, White House speech (2006)

Peace, Intelligence, Courage

“I do not expect the changes I am announcing today to bring about a transformation of Cuban society overnight. But I am convinced that through a policy of engagement, we can more effectively stand up for our values and help the Cuban people help themselves as they move into the 21st century.”

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

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)
Context: I’m under no illusion about the continued barriers to freedom that remain for ordinary Cubans. The United States believes that no Cubans should face harassment or arrest or beatings simply because they’re exercising a universal right to have their voices heard, and we will continue to support civil society there. While Cuba has made reforms to gradually open up its economy, we continue to believe that Cuban workers should be free to form unions, just as their citizens should be free to participate in the political process.
Moreover, given Cuba’s history, I expect it will continue to pursue foreign policies that will at times be sharply at odds with American interests. I do not expect the changes I am announcing today to bring about a transformation of Cuban society overnight. But I am convinced that through a policy of engagement, we can more effectively stand up for our values and help the Cuban people help themselves as they move into the 21st century.

People, Change, Help

“Nobody who has seriously dealt with the men and women in today’s military believes they are a disaster. They are a national treasure of all races, all religions, all walks of life.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

Life, Women, Men, Religion

“Richard Feynman used to go up to people all the time and he'd say "You won't believe what happened to me today… you won't believe what happened to me" and people would say "What?" and he'd say "Absolutely nothing". Because we humans believe that everything that happens to us is special and significant. And that — and Carl Sagan wrote beautifully about that in The Demon-Haunted World — that is much of the source of religion. Everything that happens is unusual and I expect that the likelihood that Richard and I ever would've met. If you think about all the variables: the probability that we were in the same place at the same time, ate breakfast the same. Whatever. It's zero. Every event that happens has small probability… but it happens and then when it happens; if it's weird, if you dream one million nights and it's nonsense but one night you dream that your friend is gonna break his leg and the next day he breaks his arm… *sound of revelation* So the real thing that physics tell us about the universe is that it's big, rare events happen all the time — including life — and that doesn't mean it's special.”

Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist

"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t=1h03m20s Closing words (01:03:20 - 01:04:30)

Life, People, World, Religion

“There are today an increasing number of people whose awareness is, in the strict sense of the phrase, without a focus; and the techniques which have transformed the framework of daily life for such people at such a prodigious pace – I am thinking particularly of the cinema and the radio – are making a most powerful contribution towards this defocalizing process. … The human creature under normal conditions finds his bearings in relation to other people, and also to physical objects, that are not only close to him in space but also linked to him by a feeling of intimacy. Of this feeling of intimacy, I would say that in itself it tends to create a focus for human awareness. One might go farther and speak of a kind of constellation, at once material and spiritual, which under normal conditions assembles itself around each human being. … This kind of constellation around the individual life is, in a great many countries, in process of dissolution.”

Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), pp. 146-147

Life, People, Feeling, Thinking

“Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we learn something new, we don’t go from “wrong” to “right.” Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong. And when we learn something additional, we go from slightly less wrong to slightly less wrong than that, and then to even less wrong than that, and so on. We are always in the process of approaching truth and perfection without actually ever reaching truth and perfection.
We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we’re wrong today so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 6, “You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)” (p. 117)

Truth, Way, Learning, Perfection

“We know today that nothing will restore the pre-machine condition of reasonably universal employment save an artificial allocation of working hours involving the use of more men than formerly to perform a given task.... The primary function of society, in spite of all the sophistries spurred of selfishness, is to give men better conditions than they could get without it; and the basic need today is jobs for all—not for "property" for a few of the luck and the acquisitive.... In view of the urgent need for change, there is something almost obscene in the chatter of the selfish about various psychological evils allegedly inherent in a New Deal promising decent economic security and humane leisure for all instead of for a few.... What is worth answering is the kindred outcry about "regimentation", "collective slavery", "violation of Anglo-Saxon freedom", "destruction of the right of the individual to make his own way" and so on; with liberal references to Stalin, Hitler, Mustapha Kemal, and other extremist dictators who have sought to control men's personal, intellectual, and artistic lives, and traditional habits and folkways, as well as their economic fortunes. Naturally the Anglo-Saxon balks at any programme calculated to limit his freedom as a man and a thinker or to disturb his inherited perspectives and daily customs—and need we say that no plan ever proposed in an Anglo-Saxon country would conceivably seek to limit such freedom or disturb such perspectives and customs? Here we have a deliberate smoke-screen—conscious and malicious confusion of terms. A decent planned society would indeed vary to some extent the existing regulations (for there are such) governing commercial and economic life. Yet who save a self-confessed Philistine or Marxist (the plutocrat can cite "Das Kapital" for his purpose!) would claim that the details and conditions of our merely economic activities form more than a trivial fraction of our whole lives and personalities? That which is essential and distinctive about a man is not the routine of material struggle he follows in his office; but the civilised way he lives, outside his office, the life whose maintenance is the object of his struggle. So long as his office work gains him a decently abundant and undisputedly free life, it matters little what that work is—what the ownership of the enterprise, and what and how distributed its profits, if profits there be. We have seen that no system proposes to deny skill and diligence an adequate remuneration. What more may skill and diligence legitimately ask? Nor is any lessening in the pride of achievement contemplated. Man will thrill just as much at the overcoming of vast obstacles, and the construction of great works, whether his deeds be performed for service or for profit. As it is, the greatest human achievements have never been for profit. Would Keats or Newton or Lucretius or Einstein or Santayana flourish less under a rationally planned society? Any intimation that a man's life is wholly his industrial life, and that a planned economic order means a suppression of his personality, is really both a piece of crass ignorance and an insult to human nature. Incidentally, it is curious that no one has yet pointed to the drastically regulated economic life of the early Mass. Bay colony as something "American!"”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Unpublished (and probably unsent) letter to the Providence Journal (13 April 1934), quoted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy, edited by J. T. Joshi, pp. 115-116
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Way, Nature

“It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution.”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

Vers une architecture [Towards an Architecture] (1923)

Question

“We're here today because of the courage of those who stood up, and took risks, to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because of the Prague Spring -- because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people. We are here today because 20 years ago, the people of this city, took to the streets to claim the promise of a new day, and the fundamental human rights that had been denied them for far too long. Sametová Revoluce--the Velvet Revolution taught us many things. It showed us that peaceful protest could shake the foundations of an empire and expose the emptiness of an ideology. It showed us that small countries can play a pivotal role in world events and that young people can lead the way in overcoming old conflicts. And it proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.”

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

2009, A World without Nuclear Weapons (April 2009)

People, World, Peace, Way

“If John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan could negotiate with the Soviet Union, then surely a strong and confident America can negotiate with less powerful adversaries today.”

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

2014, Sixth State of the Union Address (January 2014)

Confidence, Strong

“For most people the idea of someone else telling them how many children they should have is simply unacceptable so when governments attempt to do just that it always causes controversy. In 1979 the Chinese government introduced its infamous one-child policy, changing family life in China forever. Families were encouraged to have fewer children. Those that didn't were fined. The policy was a direct response to the preceding decades of famine and starvation. It's still in place today. According to official figures, without the one-child policy, there'd be four hundred million more people in China, that's more than the entire population of the USA. Its unlikely that other governments could undertake such an extreme path without major civil opposition. In the 1970s the Indian government also sought to bring down its birthrate. To start with it took a less aggressive path, setting up festivals around the country where vasectomies were carried out for small incentives. m31s56”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

Life, Children, People, Family

“[The Texas anti-sodomy statute] undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty. So do laws prohibiting prostitution, recreational use of heroin, and, for that matter, working more than 60 hours per week in a bakery. But there is no right to 'liberty' under the Due Process Clause, though today's opinion repeatedly makes that claim.... The Fourteenth Amendment expressly allows States to deprive their citizens of 'liberty,' so long as 'due process of law' is provided....”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On the right to sodomy: Lawrence v. Texas (2003) (dissenting).
2000s

Law

“There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.”

David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty (1871–1936) Royal Navy officer

On the British battlecruiser losses in the early portion of the Battle of Jutland (1916), as quoted in The Rules of the Game : Jutland and British Naval Command (2005) by Andrew Gordon, p. 120

“Is this even possible today?-But some day, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit whose compeHing strength will not let him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is misunderstood by the people as if it were flight from reality-while it is only his' absorption, immersion, penetration into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home the redemption of this reality: its redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell-stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and antinihilist; this victor over God and nothingness- he must come one day.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 2, Aphorism 24
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Love, God, People, Age

Quotes about today page 4

Quotes about today
page 4