Quotes about today

page 45

NOTE (on Guy Fawkes' Day)
Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943)
Context: The Fifth of November is Guy Fawkes' Day in England. In peacetime it is celebrated with bonfires on the greens, fireworks in the parks and the carrying of "guys" through the streets. "Guys" are stuffed, straw figures of unpopular persons; and after they have been shown to everybody they are burnt in the bonfires amid great acclamation. The children black their faces and put on comical clothes, and go about begging for a Penny for the Guy. Only the very meanest people refuse to give pennies and these are always visited by Extreme Bad Luck.
The Original Guy Fawkes was one of the men who took part in the Gunpowder Plot. This was a conspiracy for blowing up King James I and the Houses of Parliament on November 5th, 1605. The plot was discovered, however, before any damage was done. The only result was that King James and his Parliament went on living but Guy Fawkes, poor man, did not. He was executed with the other conspirators. Nevertheless, it is Guy Fawkes who is remembered today and King James who is forgotten. For since that time, the Fifth of November in England, like the Fourth of July in America, has been devoted to Fireworks. From 1605 till 1939 every village green in the shires had a bonfire on Guy Fawkes' Day.

1940s, Fourth Inaugural Address (1945)
Context: We Americans of today, together with our allies, are passing through a period of supreme test. It is a test of our courage — of our resolve — of our wisdom — our essential democracy. If we meet that test — successfully and honorably — we shall perform a service of historic importance which men and women and children will honor throughout all time. As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of office in the presence of my fellow countrymen — in the presence of our God — I know that it is America's purpose that we shall not fail.

Address to Congress (1945)
Context: Today, America has become one of the most powerful forces for good on earth. We must keep it so. We have achieved a world leadership which does not depend solely upon our military and naval might.
We have learned to fight with other nations in common defense of our freedom. We must now learn to live with other nations for our mutual good. We must learn to trade more with other nations so that there may be — for our mutual advantage — increased production, increased employment and better standards of living throughout the world.
May we Americans all live up to our glorious heritage.
In that way, America may well lead the world to peace and prosperity.

The New York Times interview (1994)
Context: To me, I don't even think of life after death. To me, life after death and reincarnation are just slices of the pie. Life is a huge wheel and it goes around and around, and life after death is just a segment of that. It comes down to spiritual growth. I think that we keep coming back until we learn what we need to learn, until we get it right.
I think we've all lived hundreds, maybe thousands of times. That which you think becomes your world. It's only when we're alive and in this world that we have the chance to progress. From the state of the world today, we haven't made much progress.

Politics Is The Mind-Killer http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ (February 2007)
Context: People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation... When, today, you get into an argument about whether "we" ought to raise the minimum wage, you're executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed... Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing your soldiers in the back — providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

1960s, I Have A Dream (1963)
Context: Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.
One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

Address on religious factions (1981)
Context: I must make it clear that I don't condemn these groups for what they believe. I happen to share many of the values emphasized by these organizations.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." … This unrelenting obsession with a particular goal destroys the perspective of many decent people. They have become easy prey to manipulation and misjudgment.

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity — but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage. We must compress into a single second what was held before in a sixty-second minute.

Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: The task I am called upon to perform today is to my thinking by no means a merely formal or easy matter. It fills me with deep concern to give an address, with such authority as a president's chair confers, upon a science which, though still in a purely nascent stage, seems to me at least as important as any other science whatever. Psychical science, as we here try to pursue it, is the embryo of something which in time may dominate the whole world of thought. This possibility — nay, probability — does not make it the easier to me now. Embryonic development is apt to be both rapid and interesting; yet the Prudent man shrinks from dogmatizing on the egg until he has seen the chicken.

University of Havana address (2005)
Context: All sense of dialectics is lost when someone believes that today’s economy is identical to the economy 50 or 100 or 150 years ago, or that it is identical to the one in Lenin’s day or to the time when Karl Marx lived. Revisionism is a thousand miles away from my mind and I truly revere Marx, Engels and Lenin.

"Eckhart, Brethren of the Free Spirit," from Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century (1974), ch. 4
Context: The influence of Meister Eckhart is stronger today than it has been in hundreds of years. Eckhart met the problems of contingency and omnipotence, creator-and-creature-from-nothing by making God the only reality and the presence or imprint of God upon nothing, the source of reality in the creature. Reality in other words was a hierarchically structured participation of the creature in the creator. From the point of view of the creature this process could be reversed. If creatureliness is real, God becomes the Divine Nothing. God is not, as in scholasticism, the final subject of all predicates. He is being as unpredicable. The existence of the creature, in so far as it exists, is the existence of God, and the creature’s experience of God is therefore in the final analysis equally unpredicable. Neither can even be described; both can only be indicated. We can only point at reality, our own or God’s. The soul comes to the realization of God by knowledge, not as in the older Christian mysticism by love. Love is the garment of knowledge. The soul first trains itself by systematic unknowing until at last it confronts the only reality, the only knowledge, God manifest in itself. The soul can say nothing about this experience in the sense of defining it. It can only reveal it to others.

2000s, 2001, Address to Joint Session of Congress on Administration Goals (February 2001)
Context: As government promotes compassion, it also must promote justice. Too many of our citizens have cause to doubt our nation's justice when the law points a finger of suspicion at groups, instead of individuals. All our citizens are created equal and must be treated equally. Earlier today, I asked John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, to develop specific recommendations to end racial profiling. It is wrong, and we will end it in America. It is wrong. In so doing, we will not hinder the work of our nation’s brave police officers. They protect us every day, often at great risk. But by stopping the abuses of a few, we will add to the public confidence our police officers earn and deserve.

1940s, Victory broadcast (1945)
Context: We stand in Tokyo today reminiscent of our countryman, Commodore Perry, ninety-two years ago. His purpose was to bring to Japan an era of enlightenment and progress, by lifting the veil of isolation to the friendship, trade, and commerce of the world. But alas the knowledge thereby gained of western science was forged into an instrument of oppression and human enslavement. Freedom of expression, freedom of action, even freedom of thought were denied through appeal to superstition, and through the application of force. We are committed by the Potsdam Declaration of principles to see that the Japanese people are liberated from this condition of slavery. … To the Pacific basin has come the vista of a new emancipated world. Today, freedom is on the offensive, democracy is on the march. Today, in Asia as well as in Europe, unshackled peoples are tasting the full sweetness of liberty, the relief from fear.

1961, The City upon a Hill speech
Context: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests. But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us." Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arbella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors — and a government cannot be selected — merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these.

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)
Context: A year ago, we all were united in the joy over having broken free of totalitarianism. Today we all are made somewhat nervous by the burden of freedom. Our society is still in a state of shock. This shock could have been expected, but none of us expected it to be so profound. The old system collapsed, and a new one so far has not been built. Our social life is marked by a subliminal uncertainty over what kind of system we are going to build, how to build it, and whether we are able to build it at all.

Massachusetts v. United States, 333 U.S. 611, 639-40 (1948) (dissenting)
Judicial opinions

The Uttarpara Address (1909)
Context: This is the word that has been put into my mouth to speak to you today. What I intended to speak has been put away from me, and beyond what is given to me I have nothing to say. It is only the word that is put into me that I can speak to you. That word is now finished. I spoke once before with this force in me and I said then that this movement is not a political movement and that nationalism is not politics but a religion, a creed, a faith. I say it again today, but I put it in another way. I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it is the Sanatan Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatan Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows. When the Sanatan Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatan Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatan Dharma it would perish.

The Issue (1908)
Context: Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today? Many of you think you are. Against whom? Against Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow and competed with the Santa Fe from here to Kansas City.

Radio address "Our American Culture" broadcast during an intermission of the Metropolitan Opera. (1 March 1941)
Context: Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave. That is why I believe that this frightfulness we see everywhere today is only temporary. Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. All men will want to be free and share our way of life. There must be so much that I should have said, but haven't. What I will say now is just what most of us are probably thinking every day. I thank God and America for the right to live and raise my family under the flag of tolerance, democracy and freedom.

1961, Address to ANPA
Context: Today no war has been declared — and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired.
If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions — by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
Nevertheless, every democracy recognizes the necessary restraints of national security — and the question remains whether those restraints need to be more strictly observed if we are to oppose this kind of attack as well as outright invasion.

1940s, Victory broadcast (1945)
Context: Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain with death — the seas bear only commerce — men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world lies quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way.

At a Labour Party conference in the UK, quoted in The Independent. "Clinton urges caution over Iraq as Bush is granted war powers" (3 October 2002) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/clinton-urges-caution-over-iraq-as-bush-is-granted-war-powers-607775.html
2000s
Context: A preemptive action today, however well-justified, may come back with unwelcome consequences in the future. And because … I've done this. I've ordered these kinds of actions — I don't care how precise your bombs and your weapons are, when you set them off, innocent people will die.

28 September 2014, Sunday Times http://www.pressreader.com/bookmark/NWNJXD8V5BO2/
Speaking & Features
Context: An estimated 100 million sharks are fished out of the world's oceans every year. Take a minute to mull over that figure. That's over a quarter of a million animals each day … If this number of humans were killed in a year, it would be called genocide. There is a name for what is happening in our oceans today: it is ecocide.

Remarks at Bowie State University ceremony (17 May 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/17/remarks-first-lady-bowie-state-university-commencement-ceremony
2010s
Context: But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of 'separate but equal', when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can’t be bothered. Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they're sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching T. V. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they're fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper. Right now, one in three African American students are dropping out of high school. Only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 has gotten a college degree; one in five.

The weak-nerved lack the strength to include themselves in the dialectic syllogism.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)

(p. 221)
Sheltering Desert; Union Deutsche Verlangsgesellschaft Ulm (1958)
Context: All power operates on a narrow basis; it rests on a few chosen faculties, and always ruthlessly exploits the weak. But history has shown again and again that the weak of the present have become the strong of the future, whereas power of today has provided the ruins of tomorrow. Who can know today that attributes and capacities will be vital in a thousand years' time? Only the preservation of all our attributes, including our weaknesses, can carry us safely through into the uncertain future. But how can it be done? Certainly not by force which does not preserve but destroys. There is only one thing which preserves all things, including the weak, and that is love.

Source: Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938), Ch. 5 "The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism"
Context: Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being. This is not only true in private life, it has always been the same in political life as well.
The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.

Apocalypse Descending (2002)
Context: A lot of the revisionist thinking by feminist mythologisers — people who based their projections of ancient "matristic" cultures on work done by folks like Marija Gimbutas — is based on archaeological and anthropological speculation that in some cases has since been proved wrong. The pretty happy flower children who lived at ancient Knossos, for instance, were the result of wishful thinking by the Victorian explorer Arthur Evans (a man, please note). No one actually knows what these cultures were really like, but it's doubtful that they were free of the same problems of sexual inequality that we have today.

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: The liberals were right when they insisted that we had enough food and goods for all of our people. But they did not — and we still do not — know how to distribute those goods in a rational way. We have failed to figure out how to turn this abundance into an advantage. The liberals were also right about labor-saving. If we evenly distributed the work that needs to be done, there ought to be a lot of time left over for everybody to have the leisure that people need. But we have managed to reverse that. Today, a great many people cannot find any work. People are dispossessed and cannot support themselves or their families. Many are homeless. For many others, work has become a rat race: something to be endured, not enjoyed.
Today we are witnessing an impoverishment: the apparent drying up of resources for all kinds of things that are badly needed. We seem to have no money for housing, for education, or for health and social services. And yet we have a deficit, and we are told by candidates for public office that we must cut the federal budget even more. This impoverishment is a mystery.

Source: Trachiniae, Line 943.

https://twitter.com/chetfaliszek/status/980861065989783552 (2 April 2018).
Context: I recently posted about Oculus/Facebook and their data collection. Let me go more in depth and this isn’t just about today this is about the future of XR. At the heart of the matter are these points where their and actions differ from other XR companies.
FB tracks and stores all device movement and location. They also have wording to allow them to track all communication and interaction with their services. They have been caught capturing call and sms data on android phones through their FB app using similar language.
FB doesn’t have a Hardware guy in charge of Oculus Hardware – instead, they have Boz – an ad guy, a data guy who recently made thoughts on your value as a FB user very clear. And if you are still confused, FB isn’t a social media company, it is a data tracking company.
Why care that they track this data? Think the future, not just today. When there are XR apps and devices that you use regularly outside your home. Where natural feature tracking means cameras and microphones strapped to your head recording and saving everything.
...
So it isn’t just Facebook and what they will do with this data, but this data’s existence is a threat to our privacy and freedom.

Preface to 1995 edition of The Greening of America
Context: If there was any doubt about the need for social transformation in 1970, that need is clear and urgent today. … I am now more convinced than ever that the conflict and suffering now threatening to engulf us are entirely unnecessary, and a tragic waste of our energy and resources. We can create an economic system that is not at war with human beings or nature, and we can get from here to there by democratic means.

Interview for French TV (1998)
Context: There's a detachment that you need as a writer. And as a young man, I probably had more detachment than I have today. So that part of me was just looking at the battlefield, and it was certainly full of horrors. There was a lieutenant with us and a driver and another enlisted man like myself. And I think they were shocked profoundly.
I just thought — this is a cold and cruel thing to say, but it's the way a writer is — I thought, "Oh, this is good." Not that it was good that all these people are dead. But "Oh, it's so good for writing." There was a sense of, "This can be used."

Opposition to the slave trade did come in time, in the principles of the American Revolution, but not before slavery had formed deep roots in the economy and polity of the United States. The foreign slave trade was outlawed by the United States in 1808, and it was made a capital crime in 1820, but the trade continued right up until the Civil War. It is good however to remind ourselves that no black slave was sold to a white slave trader, on the west coast of Africa, who had not already been enslaved by a black African. Slavery was an equal opportunity employer!
2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story

Excerpts of PM Rabin Knesset Speech (21 September 1993) https://web.archive.org/web/20040825072435/http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Speeches/EXCERPTS%20OF%20PM%20RABIN%20KNESSET%20SPEECH%20-DOP-%20-%2021-Sep
Context: We are destined to live together, on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians. We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.
We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you in a clear voice: Enough.

1960, The New Frontier
Context: But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high — to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. As Winston Churchill said on taking office some twenty years ago: if we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future. Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do. [... ] It is a time, in short, for a new generation of leadership — new men to cope with new problems and new opportunities.

Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Context: I am not disposed to bewail the limitations imposed by human ignorance. On the contrary, I feel ignorance is a healthful stimulant; and my enforced conviction that neither I nor anyone can possibly lay down beforehand what does not exist in the universe, or even what is not going on all round us everyday of our lives, leaves me with a cheerful hope that something very new and very arresting may turn up anywhere at any minute. … I shall try to utilize this temper of mind today by clearing away, so far as I can, certain presuppositions, on one side or on the other, which seem to me to depend upon a too hasty assumption that we know more about the universe than as yet we really can know.

As quoted on BBC News, "Central African Republic MPs elect Catherine Samba-Panza" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-25811250, January 20, 2014.
2010s, 2014
Context: I call on my children, especially the anti-balaka, to put down their arms and stop all the fighting. The same goes for the ex-Seleka - they should not have fear. I don't want to hear any more talk of murders and killings. Starting today, I am the president of all Central Africans, without exclusion.

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Context: No one knows toward what center human things are going to gravitate in the near future, and hence the life of the world has become scandalously provisional. Everything that today is done in public and in private — even in one's inner conscience — is provisional, the only exception being certain portions of certain sciences. He will be a wise man who puts no trust in all that is proclaimed, upheld, essayed, and lauded at the present day. All that will disappear as quickly as it came. All of it, from the mania for physical sports (the mania, not the sports themselves) to political violence; from "new art" to sun-baths at idiotic fashionable watering-places. Nothing of all that has any roots; it is all pure invention, in the bad sense of the word, which makes it equivalent to fickle caprice. It is not a creation based on the solid substratum of life; it is not a genuine impulse or need. In a word, from the point of view of life it is false.
We are in presence of the contradiction of a style of living which cultivates sincerity and is at the same time a fraud. There is truth only in an existence which feels its acts as irrevocably necessary. There exists today no politician who feels the inevitableness of his policy, and the more extreme his attitudes, the more frivolous, the less inspired by destiny they are. The only life with its roots fixed in earth, the only autochthonous life, is that which is made of inevitable acts. All the rest, all that it is in our power to take or to leave or to exchange for something else, is mere falsification of life. Life today is the fruit of an interregnum, of an empty space between two organizations of historical rule — that which was, that which is to be. For this reason it is essentially provisional. Men do not know what institutions to serve in truth; women do not know what type of men they in truth prefer.
The European cannot live unless embarked upon some great unifying enterprise. When this is lacking, he becomes degraded, grows slack, his soul is paralyzed. We have a commencement of this before our eyes today. The groups which up to today have been known as nations arrived about a century ago at their highest point of expansion. Nothing more can be done with them except lead them to a higher evolution. They are now mere past accumulating all around Europe, weighing it down, imprisoning it. With more vital freedom than ever, we feel that we cannot breathe the air within our nations, because it is confined air. What was before a nation open to all the winds of heaven, has turned into something provincial, an enclosing space.

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. And I am still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country. And the other thing is that I am concerned about a better world. I'm concerned about justice. I'm concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 23
Context: How would your life be different if … You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day … You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.
Far from living in a world of visions and imagining men better than they are, we see them as they are; and that is why we affirm that the best of men is made essentially bad by the exercise of authority, and that the theory of the "balancing of powers" and "control of authorities" is a hypocritical formula, invented by those who have seized power, to make the "sovereign people," whom they despise, believe that the people themselves are governing. It is because we know men that we say to those who imagine that men would devour one another without those governors: "You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?'"

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 279
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Context: Exceptional, unforeseeable, or even inexplicable phenomena would hence be fortuitous. these very vague adjectives too often have a merely circumstancial meaning. A given phenomenon, today considered random, may tomorrow be considered determined because its causes will have been unraveled by thorough and specific study.
Biologists, whose task is not to seek moral causes or intentions, must first of all make sure that so-called random facts really are random facts; they must constantly keep in mind Poincare's (1912b, p. 65) famous phrase: "Chance is only the measure of our ignorance."

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: Being resolute today means to act within the framework of political and social pluralism and the rule of law to provide conditions for continued reform and prevent a breakdown of the state and economic collapse, prevent the elements of chaos from becoming catastrophic.
All this requires taking certain tactical steps, to search for various ways of addressing both short- and long-term tasks. Such efforts and political and economic steps, agreements based on reasonable compromise, are there for everyone to see.

1963, Ich bin ein Berliner
Context: What is true of this city is true of Germany — real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

1990s, Inaugural speech (1994)
Context: Today we are entering a new era for our country and its people. Today we celebrate not the victory of a party, but a victory for all the people of South Africa.
Our country has arrived at a decision. Among all the parties that contested the elections, the overwhelming majority of South Africans have mandated the African National Congress to lead our country into the future. The South Africa we have struggled for, in which all our people, be they African, Coloured, Indian or White, regard themselves as citizens of one nation is at hand.

"The Rune of St. Patrick", derived from "The Lorica", both traditionally attributed to St. Patrick, translation by James Clarence Mangan, published in Lyrica Celtica (1896); also in Celtic Christianity : Ecology and Holiness (1987) by Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh, p. 54
Context: At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place,
By God's almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.

"Tomorrow" (1919), as translated in A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1970) edited and translated by Mirra Ginsburg
Context: Yesterday, there was a tsar, and there were slaves; today there is no tsar, but the slaves remain; tomorrow there will be only tsars. We march in the name of tomorrow's free man — the royal man. We have lived through the epoch of suppression of the masses; we are living in an epoch of suppression of the individual in the name of the masses; tomorrow will bring the liberation of the individual — in the name of man. Wars, imperialist and civil, have turned man into material for warfare, into a number, a cipher. Man is forgotten, for the sake of the sabbath. We want to recall something else to mind: that the sabbath is for man.
The only weapon worthy of man — of tomorrows's man — is the word.

Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology. We all know that religion has been historically, and still is today, a cause of great evil as well as great good in human affairs. We have seen terrible wars and terrible persecutions conducted in the name of religion. We have also seen large numbers of people inspired by religion to lives of heroic virtue, bringing education and medical care to the poor, helping to abolish slavery and spread peace among nations. Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls.

"Tomorrow" (1919), as translated in A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1970) edited and translated by Mirra Ginsburg
Context: Every today is at the same time both a cradle and a shroud: a shroud for yesterday, a cradle for tomorrow. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow are equally near to one another, and equally far. They are generations, they are grandfathers, fathers, and grandsons. And grandsons invariably love and hate the fathers; the fathers invariably hate and love the grandfathers.
Today is doomed to die — because yesterday died, and because tomorrow will be born. Such is the wise and cruel law. Cruel, because it condemns to eternal dissatisfaction those who already today see the distant peaks of tomorrow; wise, because eternal dissatisfaction is the only pledge of eternal movement forward, eternal creation. He who has found his ideal today is, like Lot's wife, already turned to a pillar of salt, has already sunk into the earth and does not move ahead. The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy: tomorrow is an inevitable heresy of today, which has turned into a pillar of salt, and to yesterday, which has scattered to dust. Today denies yesterday, but is a denial of denial tomorrow. This is the constant dialectic path which in a grandiose parabola sweeps the world into infinity. Yesterday, the thesis; today, the antithesis, and tomorrow, the synthesis.

which may well be with us for decades to come — compels us to invest in our nation's future, to consider and meet our obligations to our children and the numberless generations that will follow.
"Special message to the Congress on Conservation (69)" (1 March 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1962

"Sunshine Superman"
Sunshine Superman (1966)
Context: Sunshine came softly through my a-window today
Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways
It'll take time, I know it but in a while
You're gonna be mine, I know it, we'll do it in style
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine.

Nobel acceptance speech (1989)
Context: As we enter the final decade of this century I am optimistic that the ancient values that have sustained mankind are today reaffirming themselves to prepare us for a kinder, happier twenty-first century.
I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.

"Exiles From Their Land, History Their Domicile"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: History has tongues
Has angels has guns — has saved has praised —
Today proclaims
Achievements of her exiles long returned
Now no more rootless, for whom her printed page
Glazes their bruised waste years in one
Balancing present sky.

Songs My Mother Taught Me (1994)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)
Context: Liberty was the second article of our covenant. It was self-government. It was our Bill of Rights. But it was more. America would be a place where each man could be proud to be himself: stretching his talents, rejoicing in his work, important in the life of his neighbors and his nation. This has become more difficult in a world where change and growth seem to tower beyond the control and even the judgment of men. We must work to provide the knowledge and the surroundings which can enlarge the possibilities of every citizen. The American covenant called on us to help show the way for the liberation of man. And that is today our goal. Thus, if as a nation there is much outside our control, as a people no stranger is outside our hope.

From a speech during "Life Without You" in Philadelphia (June 30, 1987) at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TNdidTsJ4s
Context: You know, [Jojo] right now, the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all, I thank God I’m alive today, and I mean that. You see, I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing. It took me quite a while to find out that the real deal is to be able to be enough of a person on your own to know when somebody loves and cares about you. You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other — our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That’s to help each other, not hurt each other. Sometimes, to help them, we've got to help ourselves, so that we’ll know that they’re around in the first place. You see, it’s a big world out there with enough pain and misery in it, without me going around and helping it out by hurting myself, and consequently, those that care about me. What I’m trying to get across to you is: Please take care of yourself and those that you love, because that’s what we are here for, that’s all we’ve got, and that is what we can take with us.

Incidentals (1904)
Context: Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows.
We may pull apart the petals of a rose or make chemical analysis of its perfume, but the mystic beauty of its form and odor is still a secret, locked in to where we have no keys.

p. viii
Context: War has changed little in principle from the beginning of recorded history. The mechanized warfare of today is only an evolution of the time when men fought with clubs and stones, and its machines are as nothing without the men who invent them, man them and give them life. War is force- force to the utmost- force to make the enemy yield to our own will- to yield because they see their comrades killed and wounded- to yield because their own will to fight is broken. War is men against men. Mechanized war is still men against men, for machines are masses of inert metal without the men who control them- or destroy them.

We the People interview (1996)
Context: I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life to be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship.
Therefore my task is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships. Mutual friendships always. I-and-you and, I hope, a third one, out of which perhaps community can grow. Because perhaps here we can find what the good is.

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: A literature that is alive does not live by yesterday's clock, nor by today's but by tomorrow's. It is a sailor sent aloft: from the masthead he can see foundering ships, icebergs, and maelstroms still invisible from the deck. He can be dragged down from the mast and put to tending the boilers or working the capstan, but that will not change anything: the mast will remain, and the next man on the masthead will see what the first has seen.
In a storm, you must have a man aloft. We are in the midst of storm today, and SOS signals come from every side.

Encounters with Animals (1958)
Context: There would be a dreadful outcry if anyone suggested obliterating, say, the Tower of London, and quite rightly so; yet a unique and wonderful species of animal which has taken hundreds of thousands of years to develop to the stage we see today, can be snuffed out like a candle without more than a handful of people raising a finger or a voice in protest. So, until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.

“Iran: From Theocracy to Democracy” http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=441&page=1, George Washington University, April 13, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

Iran: Unleashing Her Potential Through Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=465&page=1, Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium, Johns Hopkins University, Oct. 12, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

As quoted by Mark Pitzke, 'Iran Is My True and Only Home' http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/iran-s-crown-prince-reza-pahlavi-iran-is-my-true-and-only-home-a-641984-2.html, August 12, 2009.
Interviews, 2009

As quoted by Afsané Bassir, Interview with Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=50&page=7, Le Monde, June 6, 2001.
Interviews, 2001-2002

As quoted in Peter Godspeed, 'It is my duty' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=462&page=2, Canada National Post, September 24, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

“Iran: From Theocracy to Democracy” http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=441&page=1, George Washington University, April 13, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

As quoted by Rachel Makabi, 'A Race Against Time' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=34&page=5, Newsweek International, Sept 4, 2006.
Interviews, 2006

As quoted by Luc de Barochez, Reza Pahlavi : «Lançons une campagne de désobéissance civile» http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20060608.FIG000000177_reza_pahlavi_lancons_une_campagne_de_desobeissance_civile.html, June 8, 2006.
Interviews, 2006

As quoted by Ahmad Zakaria, Al-Watan Daily: Interview With Reza Pahlavi Of Iran http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=197&page=4, Al-Watan Daily (Kuwait), Nov 27, 2007.
Interviews, 2007

Kibbeh Palace, Cairo, Oct. 31, 1980, as quoted in Farah Pahlavi (2004) An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah, p. 433.
Speeches, 1980

Reza Pahlavi of Iran Speech at the University Club, Washington, D.C. http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=427&page=2, Jan. 27, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

As quoted by Elaine Ganley, Shah's son wants help for Iran's opposition http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=431&page=3, The Washington Post, Feb 11, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

As quoted by Luc de Barochez, Reza Pahlavi : «Lançons une campagne de désobéissance civile» http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20060608.FIG000000177_reza_pahlavi_lancons_une_campagne_de_desobeissance_civile.html, June 8, 2006.
Interviews, 2006

As quoted by Felice Friedson, Iranian Crown Prince: Ahmadinejad's regime is "delicate and fragile" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=459&page=2, August 12, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

Iran: Unleashing Her Potential Through Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=465&page=1, Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium, Johns Hopkins University, Oct. 12, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

2019

"School strike for climate - save the world by changing the rules" https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/greta-speeches#greta_speech_tedx, TEDxStockholm (24 November 2018)
2018