Quotes about transit
A collection of quotes on the topic of transit, transition, time, timing.
Quotes about transit

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter One
Source: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Full Text of 1916 Edition

Introduction; part of this has sometimes been paraphrased : Our civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth — the transition from the tribal or 'closed society', with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open society' which sets free the critical powers of man.
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

True Hallucinations http://www.matrixmasters.com/takecharge/consciousness/mckenna2.html (1993)

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 152–64.
Collected Works

2016, Presidential transition of Donald Trump (November 2016)

Alfred Cortot: Master Class on Schumann Kinderszenen (1953) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNUNNNNj_Qw

2016, Presidential transition of Donald Trump (November 2016)

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 21, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

Source: The Semantic Conception of Truth (1952), p. 45; as cited in: Schaff (1962) pp. 36-37.

General Relation of the Concept System of Thesis and Antithesis
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Source: The rise of the western world, 1973, p. 240-1, as cited in: Thrainn Eggertsson (1990), Economic behavior and institutions. p. 255-6

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly (24 September 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/24/remarks-president-obama-address-united-nations-general-assembly
2013

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 323.

Summary of Freud's view found in Karen Armstrong's 'A History of God' (1993), p. 409
Misattributed

Reported by Jesse Helms on WRAL-TV as remarks made at Duke University, quoted in The News and Courier (29 December 1970) "Freedom Hoax" http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=RchJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vgwNAAAAIBAJ&pg=4424,7008512
Disputed

" Austin Aries, vegan wrestler http://www.greatveganathletes.com/austin-aries-vegan-wrestler" by Cris Iles-Wright. Interview for greatveganathletes.com, 2014.

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts
Context: On this seat — where she came to me for the first time, which was once so important to us that it seemed as if the background of things all about us had been created by us — we sit down to-day, after we have vainly sought in nature the traces of our transit.
The landscape is peaceful, simple, empty; it fills us with a great quivering. Marie is so sad and so simple that you can see her thought.
I have leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. I have contemplated the gravel at my feet; and suddenly I start, for I understand that my eyes were looking for the marks of our footsteps, in spite of the stone, in spite of the sand.
After the solemnity of a long silence, Marie's face takes on a look of defeat, and suddenly she begins to cry. The tears which fill her — for one always weeps in full, drop on to her knees. And through her sobs there fall from her wet lips words almost shapeless, but desperate and fierce, as a burst of forced laughter.
"It's all over!" she cries.

“Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life.”
Final address (1973)
Context: Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

“Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising.”
ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05
Context: Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the “Aha.” Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in — the one that we think is reality.

Prefatory Remarks
The Philosophical Letters
Context: The reason passes, like the heart, through certain epochs and transitions, but its development is not so often portrayed. Men seem to have been satisfied with unfolding the passions in their extremes, their aberration, and their results, without considering how closely they are bound up with the intellectual constitution of the individual.

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: I am an optimist and I believe that together we shall be able now to make the right historical choice so as not to miss the great chance at the turn of centuries and millenia and make the current extremely difficult transition to a peaceful world order. A balance of interests rather than a balance of power, a search for compromise and concord rather than a search for advantages at other people's expense, and respect for equality rather than claims to leadership — such are the elements which can provide the groundwork for world progress and which should be readily acceptable for reasonable people informed by the experience of the twentieth century.
The future prospect of truly peaceful global politics lies in the creation through joint efforts of a single international democratic space in which States shall be guided by the priority of human rights and welfare for their own citizens and the promotion of the same rights and similar welfare elsewhere. This is an imperative of the growing integrity of the modern world and of the interdependence of its components.

Source: The Divided Self (1960), Ch. 1 : The existential-phenomenological foundations for a science of persons
Context: Existential phenomenology attempts to characterize the nature of a person's experience of his world and himself. It is not so much an attempt to describe particular objects of his experience as to set all particular experiences within the context of his whole being-in-his-world. The mad things said and done by the schizophrenic will remain essentially a closed book if one does not understand their existential context. In describing one way of going mad, I shall try to show that there is a comprehensible transition from the sane schizoid way of being-in-the-world to a psychotic way of being-in-the-world. Although retaining the terms schizoid and schizophrenic for the sane and psychotic positions respectively, I shall not, of course, be using these terms in their usual clinical psychiatric frame of reference, but phenomenologically and existentially.

Source: Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (2012, 2nd ed. 2015), Ch. 1: Historical Introduction
¿Cómo describirías tu paso de adolescente a adulta? La verdad es que apenas me estoy dando cuenta, paso todo el tiempo entre los estudios y los rodajes, viviendo entre Madrid y Barcelona, casi no tengo tiempo de pensar en ello, creo que llevo más vida de adulta que de adolescente, pero muy feliz.
From the interview Hablamos con Berta Castañé, la estrella en ascenso de la pequeña pantalla https://www.marie-claire.es/moda/modelos/fotos/entrevista-a-berta-castane-241588061091, marie-claire.es, 28 July 2020.

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
Source: Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

“Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.”
Source: The Setting Sun
Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 1, The Trolley Car That Ran By Ebbets Field, p. 6

Explaining his comment that now "Every PC is a Macintosh", "Letters-General Questions Answered" p. 105 http://www.woz.org/letters/general/105.html
Woz.org files
The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)
Source: Art Talk, Conversations with 15 woman artists 1975, p. 74.

Very often attributed to Addison, this is in fact by Hugh Blair, published in Blair's Sermons (1815), Vol. 1, pp. 196-197.
Misattributed

“Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through… the transitive nightfall of diamonds”
"Dark Star"
Song lyrics, (1969)

Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.html (2012)

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)
The Making of America (1986)
In many works by the greatest colourists — Rembrandt and Watteau are examples — there are very few identifiable colours.
Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 10: Turner II: The Liberation of Colour
Source: Executable Uml: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture, 2002, p. xxiii: Foreword.

As quoted in "Ranking House Committee Members Grill Crocker and Petraeus on U.S. Progress in Iraq" in The Washington Post (10 September 2007) http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/ranking_committee_members_grill_petraeus_crocker_10.html

“What Pragmatism Means,” Pragmatism, pp. 60–61 (1931); lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute, Boston, Massachusetts (December 1906) and at Columbia University, New York City, (January 1907)
1900s

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 158.

Footnote - The very remarkable speeches of Mr. Garfield, afterward President of the United States, which had so great an influence on the settlement of the inflation question throughout the Union, were on the main lines laid down in Turgot's letter
Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 171

http://www.paulglover.org/7812.html (“America the Hard Way”), The Grapevine, cover story, Walk Across the USA), 1979-01-10
Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 48.

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 474
Foreword to A. Hassner and I. Namboothiri, Organic Syntheses Based on Name Reactions: A practical guide to 750 transformations Third Edition (2012)

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

On New Democracy (1940)
Original: (zh-CN) 这种新民主主义共和国,一方面和旧形式的、欧美式的、资产阶级专政的、资本主义的共和国相区别,那是旧民主主义的共和国,那种共和国已经过时了;另一方面,也和苏联式的、无产阶级专政的、社会主义的共和国相区别,那种社会主义的共和国已经在苏联兴盛起来,并且还要在各资本主义国家建立起来,无疑将成为一切工业先进国家的国家构成和政权构成的统治形式;但是那种共和国,在一定的历史时期中,还不适用于殖民地半殖民地国家的革命。因此,一切殖民地半殖民地国家的革命,在一定历史时期中所采取的国家形式,只能是第三种形式,这就是所谓新民主主义共和国。这是一定历史时期的形式,因而是过渡的形式,但是不可移易的必要的形式。

Thought and Change (1964)

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 41; partly cited in: Kay Deaux, Mark Snyder (2012) The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology. p. 74
Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 9, Industrial Revolution, p. 267.

Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)

Compromise proposal http://www.civilwarcauses.org/comp.htm#Jefferson%20Davis%20of%20Mississippi (24 December 1860)
1860s

“The immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.”
"In a Post-Culture".
In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 1: The New Era in World Politics, § 1 : Introduction: Flags And Cultural Identity

Statement (c. 1944), on automatic drawing, quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art, p. 162
1940 - 1948, Various sources

On the scientific revolution of the second half of the 19th century, in [Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait: supplementing the two volumes of Scientific papers published in 1898 and 1900, Cambridge University Press, 1911, 1]
The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter II. Ancient Oriental Urban cultures

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 536

David Toop (1991). Rap Attack 2: African Rap To Global Hip Hop, p.12. New York. New York: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1852422432.

Attacking the Labour President of the Board of Trade, Douglas Jay, who wanted to standardise packaging for detergents. (The Daily Telegraph 29 April 1967); from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 430
1960s
Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 37.

“Sic transit gloria mundi—Tuesday is usually worse.”
Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 12, “Halcyon” (p. 135)
transition [sic] was the avant-garde English-language magazine published in Paris 1927–1938; “A Note on Poetry”, p. 48
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“Of course it's easy to get on public transit! It's public transit.”
Blog post http://www.livejournal.com/users/qwantz/36998.html

Contemporary Thought and Politics (1974)

In a 1715 letter (LXXVII), as found in Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope: And Several of His Friends. 1737.

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 3 (Examinations), p. 27.
Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 7, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 12-13

"‘Chicago Med’ star Torrey DeVitto takes holistic approach to health, life" https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/chicago-med-star-torrey-devitto-takes-holistic-approach-to-health-life/, interview with Chicago Sun-Times (24 January 2018).