Quotes about total
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“He recognized with absolute certainty the empty fragility of even the noblest theorizings as compared with the definitive plenitude of the smallest fact grasped in its total, concrete reality.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Source: Hymn of the Universe

Reality

“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Source: Poems

Reality, Leadership

“I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what i want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

God, Pleasure, World, Learning

“Here's what I was thinking about:1. Who the new threat was 2. The air show in Mexico City 3. How to get Total to quit milking his injury, because enough was enough 4. My mom and Half sister Ella 5. Fang 6. Fang 7. Fang”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Moms, Thinking, Sister

“How do people stay in love, anyway? Is it a choice? Or is it like those plants we studied in biology that mutate into something new and totally different but are still part of the same plant family?”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Love, People, Family, Study

“The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.”

Paul Bowles (1910–1999) American composer, writer, translator

Source: The Spider's House

Life, Perfection

“He [Iggy] started reaching for things around the table, and his hand landed on Total. “You’re black.”
“I prefer canine-American,” said Total.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

“Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Time, Reading, Personality

“It’s really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

People

“If I ever become a king, I’m totally going to ask him for an army of giant golden acid-spitting llamas. Okay, sorry. I got distracted again.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

“He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it.”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

Lie, Time, Forgetting

“Jacoblike a totally normal young man. He's clearly intelligent. But having his day disrupted probably makes him feel the same way I would if I was suddenly told to bungee off the top of the Sears Tower.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Way, Feeling, Intelligence

“We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Star

“In the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: Nightfall One

Light

“I looked into his eyes, and I realized he was the same man I'd seen in my dreams. His face might be totally different, but the same soul was in there, the same intelligence and all the sadness.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Sadness, Dreams, Soul, Intelligence

“Better be," Eve said. She mock-bit at his finger. "I could totally date somebody else, you know."
"And I could rent out your room."
"And I could put your game console on eBay."
"Hey," Shane protested. "Now you're just being mean.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Game

“If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Freedom, Clothes

“Mr. Sourpuss Pants God I love her Nicholas " Thomas crowed. When he noticed that neither Nicholas nor Inez looked impressed by the words he added quickly "In a totally sister-in-law type fashion of course.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: The Renegade Hunter

Love, God, Law, Fashion

“Then I found it: the source of the blood, the place where he'd been shot.
'Total?' I said, and I got a slight whimper. 'You have a boo-boo on your tail.”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

“Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Way

“Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough”

Jeanette Winterson book Gut Symmetries

Gut Symmetries (1997)
Context: They were letting off fireworks down at the waterfront, the sky exploding in grenades of colour. Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty - even for a moment - it is enough.

Life, Beauty, Past

“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

This Is Where I Leave You (2009), 2014-January-15 http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/This_Is_Where_I_Leave_You.html?id=3jVps2Z9LQcC, Source: This is Where I Leave You

Life, People, Thinking

“Remember how, back in 1990, if you used a cellphone in public you looked like a total asshole? We're all assholes now.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

Source: JPod

“The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic…”

Cressida Cowell book How to Steal a Dragon's Sword

Source: How to Steal a Dragon's Sword

“Women won't have total equality until men can get pregnant.”

Diana Palmer (1946) American romance novelist

Women, Men

“It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Life, Lie, Personality

“Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

People, Way, Hurt

“I thought at the time that I couldn't be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Time

“Awwww, lame, we're not going to disneyworld. (said by the amazing talking dog, Total)”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Dogs

“Still, it would have been great, just once, to have a man stare at her with total adoration. To have him be… enthralled. Yes, that was the word. She would have loved for a man to be enthralled by her.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Love

“He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace.”

Lois Lowry (1937) American writer

Peace, Feeling, Silence, Speed

“I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.”

William Gibson book Idoru

Source: Idoru

Love, People, Thinking, Loyalty

“That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine…”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King (2011)
Context: "Maybe it's not metaphysics. Maybe it's existential. I'm talking about the individual US citizen's deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we've lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it's all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it's not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than "die," "pass away," the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday--... And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have pour in to make sure we're remembered, these'll last what-- a hundred years? two hundred?-- and they'll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I'm cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and that before maybe three of four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that's why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are... The post-production capitalist has something to do with the death of civics. But so does fear of smallness and death and everything being on fire."

Imagination

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Anger

“The minute I'm in a little pain… your rough, tough, scary bad boy image totally falls apart.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Dark Hunger

Pain, Boy

“Now… well, after what happened in Tartarus, it seemed like Percy had graduated to a totally different level of butt-kickery.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“I need wings," said Total, still sniffling. "I need mywings. Then things like that wouldn't happen."
Yeah, that was all I needed. Atalking mutant dog.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Dogs

“There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.”

Mary Renault book The Charioteer

Source: The Charioteer

“Women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Women, Marriage

“Give a girl a boyfriend and she becomes a total expert on relationships”

Cecily von Ziegesar book You Know You Love Me

Source: You Know You Love Me

Girl

“How about you, Mockingjay? You feel totally safe?” “Oh, yeah. Right up until I got shot,” I say.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Feeling

“No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Happiness

“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Source: Strength to Love

Learning, Heart

“Rose lit up. “I’d totally help with that. Sydney’s my friend, and I’ve got experience with—”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Bloodlines: Silver Shadows

Help

“I looked over at him. "Is that a proposal?"

There was total silence for a couple beats. "I'm not sure. It just popped out."

"Let me know when you're sure."

"Would you say yes?" Morelli asked.

"I'm not sure.”

Janet Evanovich book Fearless Fourteen

Source: Fearless Fourteen

Silence

“They belonged to each other totally, and always would, and that was that.
But maybe everyone felt that way? Until the moment they realized they were just like everyone else, and everything they'd thought was real shattered apart.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Way

“Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.”

Jürgen Moltmann (1926) German Reformed theologian

Source: Theology of Hope

Hope, Hell, Hope

“Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.”

Joe Haldeman (1943) American science fiction writer

Books, Falseness

“You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian

Books

“The dance goes from realizing that you're separate (which is the awakening) to then trying to find your way back into the totality of which you are not only a part, but which you are.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Way, Dance, Parting

“There was something about having someone care about you like that that made you feel like you could never be totally alone.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Feeling

“[The information available within a system constitutes what Boulding (1978) calls the noosphere. It is constituted by the collection of plans, of representations, of procedures, of ideas for the construction of objects or of instructions to realize certain interaction patterns, including] the totality of the cognitive content, including values, of all human nervous systems, plus the prostatic devices by which the system is extended and integrated in the form of libraries, computers, telephones, post offices, and so on.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 122, cited in: Jorge Reina Schement, Brent D. Ruben (1993) Information and Behavior - Volume 4. p. 517 Robert A. Solo (1994) " Kenneth Ewart Boulding: 1910-1993. An Appreciation http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226892" commented: "The image appears as crucial in Boulding's treatment of societal evolution. Here the record is in human artifacts, not only in material structures such as buildings and machines, telephones and radios, but also in organizations including the extended family, the tribe, the nation, and the corporation. All such artifacts originate in and are sustained by images in the human mind. Civilization and civilized man, in the language that he knows, the skills he acquires, the whole heritage of tradition and manners he has learned, are human artifacts."

Idea

“If we observe the totality of Camille Pissarro's works, we find there, despite the fluctuations, not only an extreme artistic will which never lies, but what is more, an essentially intuitive pure-bred art... He looked at everybody, you say! Why not? Everyone looked at him, too, but denied him. He was one of my masters and I do not deny him.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Quote c. 1902, in Racontars d'un Rapin, Paul Gauguin; as quoted in 'Introduction' of Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished French letters by Lionel Abel); Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 15
After Paul Cezanne it was Gauguin who came to ask advice and painted landscape at the side of the much elder Pissarro. The traces of this apprenticeship as an impressionist were soon to disappear from Gauguin's works, but shortly before he died, he wrote these sentences about his former teacher
1890s - 1910s

Art

“It was in 1947 that the idea of a conscious monochrome vision came to me... Pure, existential space was regularly winking at me, each time in a more impressive manner, and this sensation of total freedom attracted me so powerfully that I painted some monochrome surfaces just to 'see', to 'see' with my own eyes what existential sensibility granted me; absolute freedom! But each time I could neither imagine or think of the possibility of considering this as a painting, a picture, until the day when I said: Why not?”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Source: before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings", p. 15

Imagination, Idea, Thinking, Freedom

“The love of simplicity, precision and clarity, is totally Western. Today's rational plastic form does not come from the Mediterranean or the Orient; it comes from the North [of France]. The North, younger, quicker less subtle, has seen straight to the heart of the new problem of construction that is posed by modern life.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from: 'Actualités, Fernand Léger', in 'Varietés nr. 1', 1928, pp. 523-524
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Love, Life, Problem, Heart

“You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force. This president has distorted the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. He's used our men and women in uniform improperly in Guantanamo and engaged in actions that I think are totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and against what we stand for as the American people.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

92nd Street Y Cultural Center (2007)

Women, Men, War, People

“The picture of a naked girl is the most peaceful, but also the most unveiling image you can create, so it is very powerful. … We live in a patriarchal system where the female body is totally controlled and used. Women are ashamed of their bodies, and this is a deep problem. We are slaves of men because we do not control our sexuality.”

Oksana Shachko (1987–2018) Ukrainian artist and activist with FEMEN

Interview with Luxemburger Wort (2015)

Women, Men, Peace, Girl

“The total depravity of inanimate things.”

Mary Abigail Dodge (1833–1896) American writer

Epigram, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“In the United States, we’ve long had a free market system, but that system is not what it once was. Total government spending–state, federal, and local–has grown in real terms by more than 400 percent since 1965. Government spending is now one-third of the economy. As the private economy retreats, the importance of a new marketplace grows: the political marketplace. Products and services are no longer judged according to their usefulness to the economy at large–they’re judged according to whether or not they are politically useful or connected. The political marketplace is the marketplace of crony capitalism. Its supply and demand are lobbying expenditures and the resulting federal program or carve out. Its actors are not firms, but the political class and the politicians they influence”

Ted Budd (1971) American politician

Rep. Budd: The Political Market vs. the Private Market http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/02/rep-budd-political-market-vs-private-market/ (May 2, 2017)

“The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance — of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1956)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Beauty, Behavior, Soul, Thinking

“[Islamic terrorism] is different from all other forms of terrorism in at least three important respects. First, it rejects all the contemporary ideologies in their various forms; it sees itself as the total outsider with no option but to take control or to fall, gun in hand. It cannot even enter into talks with other terrorist movements which may, in some specific cases at least, share its tactical objectives. Considering itself as an expression of Islamic revival - which must, by definition, lead to the conquest of the entire globe by the True Faith - it bases all its actions on the dictum that the end justifies the means… The second characteristic that distinguishes the Islamic version from other forms of terrorism is that it is clearly conceived and conducted as a form of Holy War which can only end when total victory has been achieved. The term 'low-intensity warfare' has often been used to describe terrorism, but it applies more specifically to the Islamic kind, which does not seek negotiations, give-and-take, the securing of specific concessions or even the mere seizure of political power within a certain number of countries… The third specific characteristic of Islamic terrorism is that it forms the basis of a whole theory of both individual conduct and of state policy. To kill the enemies of Allah and to offer the infidels the choice between converting to Islam or being put to death is the duty of every individual believer as well as the supreme - if not the sole - task of the Islamic state.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Holy Terror: The inside story of Islamic terrorism (1987)

Death, War, Faith, Victory

“I really haven't even thought about it," he said. "If I somehow miraculously made it to the All-Star Game, I would be floored. I'd really be totally humbled by that. I'm just happy right now to play, to produce and to be with a good group of guys.”

Milton Bradley (baseball) (1978) Major League Baseball player

Star glows, ballots grow for Texas Rangers' Bradley, The Dallas Morning News, Time Cowlishaw, June 6, 2008, 2009-01-04 http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/stories/060608dnspocowlishaw.3022001.html?npc,

Happiness, Guy, Game, Star

“In his discussion on slavery Aristotle said that when the shuttle wove by itself and the plectrum played by itself chief workmen would not need helpers nor masters slaves. At the time he wrote, he believed that he was establishing the eternal validity of slavery; but for us today he was in reality justifying the existence of the machine. Work, it is true, is the constant form of man's interaction with his environment, if by work one means the sum total of exertions necessary to maintain life; and the lack of work usually means an impairment of function and a breakdown in organic relationship that leads to substitute forms of work, such as invalidism and neurosis. But work in the form of unwilling drudgery or of that sedentary routine which… the Athenians so properly despised—work in these forms is the true province of machines. Instead of reducing human beings to work-mechanisms, we can now transfer the main part of burden to automatic machines. This potentially… is perhaps the largest justification of the mechanical developments of the last thousand years.”

Lewis Mumford book Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 6, sct. 4

Life, Reality, Time, Parting

“In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 10

Children, Feeling, Sense, Horse

“I have talked to you in the past but we have always exchanged pleasantries. And it has always been assumed that I am Kaltenbrunner, the big bad man next to Himmler and the successor of Himmler. But I think you can see by this time, after having treated my brain hemorrhages, both in the hospital and here in my cell, that I am not the disagreeable, uncouth fellow the public probably thinks because of all the atrocities committed under Himmler's rule, and of which I am totally innocent.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

To Leon Goldensohn, 3/22/46, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Thinking, Time, Past

“There is a vast amount of energy which disappears inside organisations, or is expended going in directions which don't end up leading anywhere. If all that energy is properly directed, it can add up to a huge amount of power that can be used to produce visible results. That's why I think that over the last three years, as the level of awareness shared by the staff has increased, each individual's understanding has also developed. I believe this has meant that the total amount of energy in the company has increased more than it would have by simply increasing the number of staff. That is to say, the overall potential within the company has become more fully realised.”

Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman

Iwata's Ask: Special Edition Interview http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/special_edition_interview

Understanding, Thinking

“Systems theory is antireductionist; it asserts that no system can be adequately understood or totally explained once it has been broken down into its component parts. (For example, the central nervous system carries out thought processes would not occur if only parts were used.)”

Charles Zastrow (1942) American sociologist

Charles Zastrow (2009) Introduction to Social Work and Social Welfare: Empowering People. p. 49

Parting

“Identification [with the other] is difficult but precious. It involves doing violence to yourself. Yet Scripture says that "heaven is taken by violence" to oneself [Luke 16:16]. To identify oneself with the other is to love him beyond words, a total giving of oneself in truth.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"Living the Mandate", p. 36
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

Love, Truth

“The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty written to Congress (8 Feb 1965), in Lyndon B. Johnson: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President (1965), Vol.1, 156. United States. President (1963-1969 : Johnson), Lyndon Baines Johnson, United States. Office of the Federal Register — 1970
1960s

World, Beauty, Nature, Problem

“Rat and behavioral psychology … mirror the actual inhumanity of reality. Rat psychology is human psychology where a total society has trained human beings to be creatures of stimulus and response, i. e. rats. “Insofar as the hardening of society has reduced men more and more to objects,” wrote Adorno, “methods which convey this are no sacrilege. … The method serves freedom in that it wordlessly testifies to the prevailing unfreedom.” Or, as Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in another context: “The usual objection that empirical social research is too mechanical, too crude, and too unspiritual [ungeistig] shifts the responsibility from that which science is investigating to science itself.” … The idealistic misconception of … behavioral methods … shifts the evil from the social conditions that coerce men and women into standardized roles onto the social science that is merely registering these conditions.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 69

Women, Men, Behavior, Reality

“In his references to my own work, Gould includes at least nine citations that involve more than just an expression of Gould's opinion; in these citations Gould purportedly paraphrases my views. Yet in eight of the nine cases, Gould's representation of these views is false, misleading, or grossly caricatured. Nonspecialists could have no way of knowing any of this without reading the cited sources. While an author can occasionally make an inadvertent mistake in paraphrasing another, it appears Gould's paraphrases are consistently slanted to serve his own message…
Of all the book's references, a full 27 percent precede 1900. Another 44 percent fall between 1900 and 1950 (60 percent of those are before 1925); and only 29 percent are more recent than 1950. From the total literature spanning more than a century, the few "bad apples" have been hand-picked most aptly to serve Gould's purpose.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

Arthur Jensen, "The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons" http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/jensen-gould-fossils Contemporary Education Review 1:2, 1982

Books, Way, Literature, Appearance

“It's just, like, a total catastrophe, the unemployment rates, everything is bad — no health care, no education, no anything, no anything. And poverty is unbelievable. Then, I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, vote for me. What have you got to lose? You can't do worse, you can't do any worse than what these people have been doing and I will do better.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

About African Americans in the United States, interview with Fox News Jeanine Pirro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBmp7z9BR1w (August 21, 2016) 2010s, 2016, August

People, Health, Education, Waiting

“I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 256

People, Nature, Thinking, Parting

“The daily expenditures by consumers for new consumers' goods, upon which business stability largely depends, are determined in part by the total volume of money in circulation, in part by other factors including the frequency with which that money is returned to consumers. The flow of money, therefore, from use in consumption to another use in consumption should not be overlooked in studies of the causes and conditions of business fluctuations. It is the purpose of this paper to describe certain aspects of this circuit flow of money, to raise the question whether it does not deserve more attention that it has yet received in our analyses of business cycles, and to suggest pertinent lines of investigation. Unfortunately, the statistics upon which the most important conclusions concerning this subject must be based are not at hand and are not likely to be for a long time to come. The following discussion will have served its purpose if it stimulates further inquiry in profitable directions and helps to hasten the day when the necessary statistics are available.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: The circuit flow of money, 1922, p. 460; Early descriptions of the circular flow of income

Money, Question, Business, Study

“When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it inspire me, does it touch and move me, do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset? That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I’ve always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Art is not logic, and if you want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Brendan Maher http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interview.com/index.html, Start, Ireland, November 24, 2004

Education, Art, Soul, History

“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies—the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distraction.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 4 (pp. 35-36)

Democracy, Communication, Universe, Falseness

“We are putting in a lot of extra work into the tracks, and we are looking at least 16-17 tracks in the album. So instead of having these 12 track albums with two remixes it’s going to be like a total of maybe 19-20, so it’s going to be interesting to listen to.”

Basshunter Calling Time

Your EDM interview (17 March 2013) https://www.youredm.com/2013/03/17/your-edm-interview-basshunter/ Calling Time

“It’d be great if the record industry wasn’t completely falling apart and people’s interest in music wasn’t totally disappearing. It’s sad on a cultural level. Not even from the perspective of being in a band, just as a fan. It’s heartbreaking to see how little music means to people in modern times. And people say, “No, no, no — music means more than ever before! People are consuming music at a greater rate!” Well, that doesn’t mean anything, that’s just a statistic. All that’s saying is that people are downloading music more than before. That doesn’t mean that they’re listening to it, that they know anything about it, or that they’re going to see it.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Thrasher magazine, May 2010 http://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/music-interviews/afi/

People, Sadness, Music, Time

“I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter.”

Nikolai Gogol book The Government Inspector

Act I, sc. i
The Inspector General (1836)

“Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and then the total — all of these acts — will be written in the history of this generation.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Day of Affirmation Address (1966)
Variant: Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and then the total — all of these acts — will be written in the history of this generation.

History, Change

“They were apt to be disappointed with the way he fulfilled his promises to them, for he intended, if he could, to sweep both the bickering rivals from power. But he did not ask pure and total saintliness of himself in his dealings with those whose chief role in the government appeared to be to impede and obstruct.”

Robert Silverberg book Lord Valentine's Castle

Book 4 “The Book of the Labyrinth”, Chapter 7 (p. 383)
Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)

Disappointment, Way, Appearance

“First of all, let us try to know what love is. If love means to possess someone or something, then that is not real love, not pure love. If loves means to give oneself, to become one with everything and everyone, then that is real love. Real love is total oneness with the object loved and with the Possessor of love.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

Rainbow-Flowers (1973)

Love

“Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner Reproduzierbarkeit The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)

Art, Sense, Dependency

“We think that thoughts are there inside of us. We think that they are self-generated and spontaneous. What is actually there is what I call a thought-sphere. The thought-sphere is the totality of man's experiences, thoughts, and feelings passed on to us from generation to generation.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 6: Seeking Strengthens Separation

Feeling, Thinking

“All that is required is to find an officer, even a captain would do, to win his heart or buy him with money to get him to agreed to declare himself the savior of the Maronite population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, occupy the necessary territory, create a Christian regime that will ally itself with Israel. The territory from Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel, and everything will fall into place.”

Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) Israeli military leader and politician

While trying to work out a plan to internally destabilize Lebanon in favor of a Christian-Maronite government.
The Iron Wall (1999)

Money, Heart

“If war production should remain the only way out of a long-term depression, industrial society would be reduced to the choice between suicide through total war or suicide through total depression.”

Peter F. Drucker book Concept of the Corporation

Concept of the Corporation (1945)
compare Dwight Eisenhower's January, 1961 Farewell Speech
1930s- 1950s

War, Way, Suicide

“The minority nationalities in our country number more than thirty million. Although they constitute only 6 per cent of the total population, they inhabit extensive regions which comprise 50 to 60 per cent of China's total area. It is thus imperative to foster good relation between the Han people and the minority nationalities. The key to this question lies in overcoming Han chauvinism. At the same time, efforts should also be made to overcome local-nationality chauvinism, wherever it exists among the minority nationalities. Both Han chauvinism and local-nationality chauvinism are harmful to the unity of the nationalities; they represent one kind of contradiction among the people which should be resolved.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

" VI. THE QUESTION OF THE MINORITY NATIONALITIES "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 我国少数民族有三千多万人，虽然只占全国总人口的百分之六，但是居住地区广大，约占全国总面积的百分之五十至六十。所以汉族和少数民族的关系一定要搞好。这个问题的关键是克服大汉族主义。在存在有地方民族主义的少数民族中间，则应当同时克服地方民族主义。无论是大汉族主义或者地方民族主义，都不利于各族人民的团结，这是应当克服的一种人民内部的矛盾。

People, Question, Effort, Time

“So many people — it's just hard to believe, but just so many people dead, so many people gravely injured, so much carnage, such a disgrace. The horror is beyond description. The families of these wonderful people are totally devastated, and they will be forever. Likewise, our whole nation and indeed the whole world is devastated.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

People, World, Family, Dead

“Chicken-neck weakness is like a god now. And being totally passive, and being a huge jellyfish slacker who looks like a fried egg in a chair. That is the culture of this, okay? The worship of being destroyed. Literally, I've now discovered the secrets of it. … And everyone's wearing like pink and little green non-threatening, you know, colors, and this is what we face. This is what men look like now, on average. In fact, I used to bash men who were all into being big and muscular with tattoos and black on and going "raagh", now I get it! You don't wanna be like these people! Okay? I used to get mad at guys trying to act tough—no, no! That's good! Do that! In fact, I think I'm gonna just go all out with cut-off sleeves and drive a big fast car and be like "graagh", 'cause I mean I'm starting to get it! Men are running to that, because they see the armies… literally men in pastels… Now there's men everywhere wearing dresses, I'm telling you! It's like, they're just like "New World Order, slaughter me, please!"”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

And the New World Order is like "Act like a jellyfish coward and giggle at all reality", and they're like "Yes, yes!" "Alex Jones: I'm So Trendy Rant!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBA-sa97UYg March 2012. 2012

Men, God, People, Secret

“NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country. And now you [Hillary Clinton] want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership. You were totally in favor of it. Then you heard what I was saying, how bad it is, and you said, I can't win that debate. But you know that if you did win, you would approve that, and that will be almost as bad as NAFTA. Nothing will ever top NAFTA.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Partnership, Country