Quotes about transit (355 quotes, page 4)

“Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the new repulsion, always different, always new.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929)
Context: Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the new repulsion, always different, always new. The long neuter spell of Lent, when the blood is low, and the delight of the Easter kiss, the sexual revel of spring, the passion of midsummer, the slow recoil, revolt, and grief of autumn, greyness again, then the sharp stimulus of winter of the long nights. Sex goes through the rhythm of the year, in man and woman, ceaselessly changing: the rhythm of the sun in his relation to the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox! This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilised vase on the table.

Sex , Universe

“I quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life.”

Matt Smith (actor) (1982) English actor

As quoted in "The Big Interview : Matt Smith" at officiallondontheatre (14 May 2008 ) http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/news/interviews/view/item100026/Matt-Smith/
Context: I quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life. So if you’re playing a builder you get to know about building, if you’re playing a scientist or a physician or something you get to know about physics. And similarly with this world I like exploring their culture, that very sort of upper middle class, addictive… that’s part of the reason I love it.

Life

“In the transition epoch, surely crimes will come.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

The Economic Tendency of Freethought (1890)
Context: This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, Are the blacks good enough to be free? but, Have they the right? So today the question is not, Will outrages result from freeing humanity? but, Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?
In the transition epoch, surely crimes will come. Did the seed of tyranny ever bear good fruit? And can you expect Liberty to undo in a moment what Oppression has been doing for ages? Criminals are the crop of despots, as much a necessary expression of the evil in society as an ulcer is of disease in the blood; and so long as the taint of the poison remains, so long there will be crimes.

“America must devise a grand strategy for the transition to a world of multiple power centers now, while it still has the luxury of doing so.”

Charles A. Kupchan (1958) American university teacher

From the preface to the 2002 Knopf Edition
The End of the American Era (2002)
Context: As a matter of urgency, America needs to begin to prepare itself and the rest of the world for this uncertain future. To wait until American dominance is already gone would be to squander the enormous opportunity that comes with primacy. America must devise a grand strategy for the transition to a world of multiple power centers now, while it still has the luxury of doing so. This is the central challenge of The End of the American Era.

World

“Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Interview in El Mercurio (1981)
1980s and later
Context: Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.

Way , Democracy , Understanding , Time

“None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another.”

Robert Nozick book Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Source: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 152
Context: Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another.

“If Christ came back tomorrow, He'd have to change planes in Frankfurt. Modern air travel means less time spent in transit. That time is now spent in transit lounges.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

Travel , Change , Time , Christ

“The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.”

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

Lectures XI, XII, and XIII, "Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. This abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies. Mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically as Christianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed. Christians who have it strongly live in what is called 'recollection,' and are never anxious about the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. Of Saint Catharine of Genoa it is said that 'she took cognizance of things, only as they were presented to her in succession, moment by moment.' To her holy soul, 'the divine moment was the present moment,... and when the present moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to the facts and duties of the moment which came after.' Hinduism, mind-cure, and theosophy all lay great emphasis upon this concentration of the consciousness upon the moment at hand.

Peace , Change , Personality

“After 9/11, I was clearly blinded by fear of al Qaeda and deluded by the overwhelming military superiority of the US and the ease of democratic transitions in Eastern Europe into thinking we could simply fight our way to victory against Islamist terror. I wasn't alone. But I was surely wrong.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"McCain's National Greatness Conservatism", The Daily Dish (26 February 2008) http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/02/mccains-national-greatness-conservatism/219614/
Context: In the Cold War, I was pro-American. The world needed a counter-weight to the evils of expansionist, imperial communism. (But I was never an American utopian. There's nothing new in humanity in this country — just a better system and more freedom, which tends to be the best corrective against sustained error.) After the Cold War, I saw no reason to oppose a prudent American policy of selective interventionism to deter evil and advance good a little, but even in the Balkans, such a policy did not require large numbers of ground troops and was enabled by strong alliances. After 9/11, I was clearly blinded by fear of al Qaeda and deluded by the overwhelming military superiority of the US and the ease of democratic transitions in Eastern Europe into thinking we could simply fight our way to victory against Islamist terror. I wasn't alone. But I was surely wrong. Haven't the last few years been a sobering learning experience? Haven't we discovered that allies actually are important, that fear is no substitute for cold assessment of self-interest, that saying something will happen is not that same thing as it actually happening?
That someone could come out of the last few years believing that Teddy Roosevelt's American imperialism is a model for the future is a little hard for me to understand.

Fear , Way , Thinking , Victory

“The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent.”

Victor J. Stenger book God: The Failed Hypothesis

Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Chapter 4: 'Cosmic Evidence', p.133
Context: The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent. As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable." [... ] In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention--not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.

Nature

“A period of transition to a new quality in all spheres of society's life is accompanied by painful phenomena.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: A period of transition to a new quality in all spheres of society's life is accompanied by painful phenomena. When we were initiating perestroika we failed to properly assess and foresee everything. Our society turned out to be hard to move off the ground, not ready for major changes which affect people's vital interests and make them leave behind everything to which they had become accustomed over many years. In the beginning we imprudently generated great expectations, without taking into account the fact that it takes time for people to realize that all have to live and work differently, to stop expecting that new life would be given from above.

Life , Pain

“From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"Form and Intelligibility," from The Radcliffe Manuscripts (1949); written in 1894 as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College
Context: From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.

Age , Nature

“He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory. For he may ask in vain where are the numberless transitional links which must formerly have connected the closely allied or representative species, found in the several stages of the same great formation.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter X: "On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings", pages 341-343 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=359&itemID=F373&viewtype=side
Context: p>I have attempted to show that the geological record is extremely imperfect; that only a small portion of the globe has been geologically explored with care; that only certain classes of organic beings have been largely preserved in a fossil state; that the number both of specimens and of species, preserved in our museums, is absolutely as nothing compared with the incalculable number of generations which must have passed away even during a single formation; that, owing to subsidence being necessary for the accumulation of fossiliferous deposits thick enough to resist future degradation, enormous intervals of time have elapsed between the successive formations; that there has probably been more extinction during the periods of subsidence, and more variation during the periods of elevation, and during the latter the record will have been least perfectly kept; that each single formation has not been continuously deposited; that the duration of each formation is, perhaps, short compared with the average duration of specific forms; that migration has played an important part in the first appearance of new forms in any one area and formation; that widely ranging species are those which have varied most, and have oftenest given rise to new species; and that varieties have at first often been local (emphasis not Darwin's). All these causes taken conjointly, must have tended to make the geological record extremely imperfect, and will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory. For he may ask in vain where are the numberless transitional links which must formerly have connected the closely allied or representative species, found in the several stages of the same great formation. He may disbelieve in the enormous intervals of time which have elapsed between our consecutive formations; he may overlook how important a part migration must have played, when the formations of any one great region alone, as that of Europe, are considered; he may urge the apparent, but often falsely apparent, sudden coming in of whole groups of species. He may ask where are the remains of those infinitely numerous organisms which must have existed long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited: I can answer this latter question only hypothetically, by saying that as far as we can see, where our oceans now extend they have for an enormous period extended, and where our oscillating continents now stand they have stood ever since the Silurian epoch; but that long before that period, the world may have presented a wholly different aspect; and that the older continents, formed of formations older than any known to us, may now all be in a metamorphosed condition, or may lie buried under the ocean.</p

Nature

“We have faith in the power to change what needs to be changed but we are under no illusion that the transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy will be easy, or that democratic government will mean the end of all our problems.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Please Use Your Liberty to Promote Ours (1997)
Context: We have faith in the power to change what needs to be changed but we are under no illusion that the transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy will be easy, or that democratic government will mean the end of all our problems. We know that our greatest challenges lie ahead of us and that our struggle to establish a stable, democratic society will continue beyond our own life span.
But we know that we are not alone. The cause of liberty and justice finds sympathetic responses around the world. Thinking and feeling people everywhere, regardless of color or creed, understand the deeply rooted human need for a meaningful existence that goes beyond the mere gratification of material desires. Those fortunate enough to live in societies where they are entitled to full political rights can reach out to help their less fortunate brethren in other areas of our troubled planet.

Faith , Democracy , Problem , Change

“A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition.”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

"Heroic Reason", as translated by H. R. Hays, in Selected Writings of Juan Ramon Jimenez (1957) edited by Eugenio Florit, p. 231.
Context: A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition. When we say an artist is in a state of transition, many believe that we are belittling. In my opinion when people speak of an art of transition this indicates a better art and the best that art can give. Transition is a complete present which unites the past and the future in a momentary progressive ecstasy, a progressive eternity, a true eternity of eternities, eternal moments. Progressive ecstasy is above all dynamic; movement is what sustains life and true death is nothing but lack of movement, be the corpse upright or supine. Without movement life is annihilated, within and without, for lack of dynamic cohesion. But the dynamism should be principally of the spirit, of the idea, it should be a moral dynamic ecstasy, dynamic in relation to progress, ecstatic in relation to permanence.

“My father voluntarily left the country to avoid bloodshed. He ordered the Army not to engage in skirmishes with the population. The transition happened rather peacefully. The difference now is the regime is calling on all possible coercive forces including civilian guns-for-hire. They are trying to hang on more violently as we go along. But despite the crackdown, you must admire the degree of discipline for people not to retaliate with violence. That's amazing.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Iran’s Royal Opposition http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/10/iran-s-royal-opposition.html, The Daily Beast, Feb 10, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

People , Country

“I was born in Havana and my family left when I was five-and-a-half. I remember the transition and some memories of being in Havana. I tried to analyze this and I think all exiles who have to leave a country you love, develop a profound nostalgia for where you were born but can no longer be there – like an impossible love. You protect those memories and don’t take them for granted. It’s different for someone who grew up and still lives in the same city because they do take their memories for granted. For me, I’m very nostalgic – not only about my time in Havana, but my 30 years in Miami Beach. All those memories are pretty vivid and I guard and cherish them. I also use those recollections in my work.”

Andy García (1956) American actor and director

On how he’s nostalgic about Cuba in “Andy Garcia Interview - Up Close And Personal” https://www.lasplash.com/publish/Celebrity_Talk_102/Andy_Garcia_Interview_-_Up_Close_And_Personal.php in Splash Magazines

Family , Nostalgia , Time , Country

“Contemporary China is a complex society in transition. The kinds of technological and social changes that took societies in the west centuries to move through have sometimes been experienced by a mere two generations in China. The anxiety of careening out of balance, of being torn by parts moving too fast and too slow, is felt everywhere.”

Liu Cixin (1963) Chinese science fiction writer

On how contemporary China has quickly progressed in “'People hope my book will be China's Star Wars': Liu Cixin on China's exploding sci-fi scene” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/14/liu-cixin-chinese-sci-fi-universal-the-three-body-problem in The Guardian (2016 Dec 14)

Parting , Change

“I went vegetarian at about 5 years old when I visited a Dude Ranch with my family and saw a rodeo. It was traumatizing and I made a conscious decision at that age to never eat animals again. When I started middle school, I read a book that exposed a lot of the truth about the food industry and encouraged a healthful lifestyle through a guide to living vegan. It was a mostly simple transition that made me feel so much better about myself, inside and out. … For as long I can remember, acting and animal activism have made me feel alive and purposeful … I would love to see more organizations coming together. Sometimes it’s tricky to understand everyone’s opinions. We all have so many of the same intentions, it’d be awesome to see more support for one another amongst the community.”

Daniella Monet (1989) American actress, singer and dancer

"Celebs Who Love Veg: Our Interview with Daniella Monet", LoveVeg.com (1 March 2019) https://loveveg.com/celebs-who-love-veg-our-interview-with-daniella-monet/.

School , Family , Reading , Food

“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings. ...This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Moreover, as citizens of the United States, current and former senior-level presidential aides have constitutional rights, including the right to free speech, and they retain these rights even after they have transitioned back into private life.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson (1970) United States District Judge

Reference note: See The Federalist No. 51 (James Madison); The Federalist No. 69 (Alexander Hamilton); 1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 115–18...
Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)

Life , Housing , History , Past

“Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: Thank you. We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges, we will confront hardships, but we will get the job done. Every 4 years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Thank you.”

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

2010s, 2017, January, Inaugural address, (January 20, 2017)

Peace , Justice , Country , People

“Quote, the viability of a postsingularity economy of scarcity is indicated by the transition from an indirection-layer-based economy using markers of exchange of goods and services to a tree-structured economy characterized by optimal allocation of productivity systems in accordance with iterated tit-for-tat prisoner’s dilemma. Money is a symptom of poverty and inefficiency. Unquote.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 143)

Money , Optimism , Tree , Quotes

“There is no doubt that in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population consists of small agricultural producers, a socialist revolution can be carried out only through the implementation of a whole series of special transitional measures which would be superfluous in highly developed capitalist countries where wage-workers in industry and agriculture make up the vast majority.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Introducing the New Economic Plan, (March, 1921)
1920s

Making love , Country

“We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven

Drawing , Change

“Our competitive system of industry is a vestigial institution. It is a survival from the militant ages of the past. It is a form of warfare. It is unsuited to a world of co-operation and division of labor. Higher men are beings of sympathy. They have the natures to put themselves in the places of others. Their ideal is the Golden Rule. But our system of industry compels us to fight each other. It is a heart-hardener. It is a system of cannibalism. Instead of instilling the feeling of brotherhood, it compels us to eat each other. It will pass away. It is already far advanced in its transition to a system based on sympathy and systematic co-operation.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Vestigial Customs and Institutions, pp. 190–191
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)

Past , Heart , Nature , Fight

“So far, only the judicial branch of the government has evinced this quality of leadership. If the executive and legislative branches of the government were as concerned about the protection of our citizenship rights as the federal courts have been, then the transition from a segregated to an integrated society would be infinitely smoother. But we so often look to Washington in vain for this concern. In the midst of the tragic breakdown of law and order, the executive branch of the government is all too silent and apathetic. In the midst of the desperate need for civil rights legislation, the legislative branch of the government is all too stagnant and hypocritical. This dearth of positive leadership from the federal government is not confined to one particular political party. Both political parties have betrayed the cause of justice. The Democrats have betrayed it by capitulating to the prejudices and undemocratic practices of the southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed it by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of right wing, reactionary northerners. These men so often have a high blood pressure of words and an anemia of deeds.”

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

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)

Justice , Law , Men

“The sham cause in physical influence consists in rashly assuming that the commerce of substance and transitive forces is sufficiently knowable from their mere existence. Hence it is not so much a system as rather the neglect of all philosophical system as a superfluity in the argument. Freeing the concept from this defect, we shall have a species of commerce alone deserving to be called real, and from which the whole constituting the world merits being called real, and not ideal or imaginary.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

World

“The kingdom of God is now in process of rapid formation, as all those with forward-seeing vision and a realisation of the rapidly emerging beauty and divinity of man can bear testimony. We are passing through the transition period between the old age and the new, and the true mission of Christ, so deeply and frequently obscured by theological implications and disputations, embodies in itself the coming revelation. The development of humanity guarantees the recognition of Christ and His work and its participation, consciously, in the kingdom of God.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Forward
From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937)

Age , God , Christ , Beauty

“The way forward (in Hong Kong) is genuine democratic elections, not violence in the streets and MTR (Mass Transit Railway) stations. The freedom and human rights of the people (of Hong Kong) must be protected.”

Joseph Wu (1954) Taiwanese politician

Joseph Wu (2019) cited in " Foreign minister urges genuine democratic elections in Hong Kong http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201907220012.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 22 July 2019.

Way , People , Freedom

“The problem now (after East Timor independence from Indonesia referendum) is that we the East Timorese are without means. We are so dependent, we feel very small and fragile. But I have confidence that this will not last too long. We have hopes that after (United Nations-backed) the transitional period, we can rebuild our country.”

Xanana Gusmão (1946) former President and Prime Minister of East Timor

Xanana Gusmão (2019) cited in: " An interview with "Xanana" Gusmao http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/local/archives/1999/11/13/0000010511" in Taipei Times, 13 November 1999.

Confidence , Dependency , Country , Hope

“There is a crisis of masculinity in Britain because of the pressures rapid economic and social change have placed on masculine identity. A generation of men are in transit and unclear of their social role. They are also under pressure to live up to pornified ideals.”

Diane Abbott (1953) British Labour Party politician

Diane Abbott to warn of British 'masculinity crisis' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22530184 BBC News (15 May 2013)
2010s, 2013

Change , Men

“I am confident we can do a Brexit deal which puts jobs and prosperity first, that reassures employers that they will still be able to access the talent they need, that keeps our market for goods, services and capital open, achieves early agreement on transitional arrangements so trade can carry on flowing smoothly. The collective sigh of relief would be audible. The benefit to our economy would be huge.”

Philip Hammond (1955) British Conservative politician

Philip Hammond on Brexit: Prioritise jobs and living standards https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40339331, BBC News, 20 June 2017
2017

Self-confidence , Confidence

“Labour would seek a transitional deal that maintains the same basic terms that we currently enjoy with the EU. That means we would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market during this period. It means we would abide by the common rules of both.”

Keir Starmer (1962) British politician and barrister

Brexit: Keep single market for transition period - Labour https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41064314 BBC News (27 August 2017)
2017

“Neophil: …Leibniz, Wolff, and their various successors, to what a level of perfection and completeness they have brought philosophy! How proud Germany can be of them! Yet what does it help to claim more for oneself than is right? Let us always acknowledge that someone other than a German, I add further, someone other than a Christian, namely, Spinoza, has participated immensely in the work of bettering philosophy. Before the transition from the Cartesian to the Leibnizian philosophy could occur, it was necessary for someone to take the plunge into the monstrous abyss lying between them. This unhappy lot fell to Spinoza. How his fate is to be pitied! He was a sacrifice for the human intellect, but one that deserves to be decorated with flowers. Without him, philosophy would never have been able to extend its borders so far.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Moses Mendelssohn, in his Philosophical Writings (1755–77) [original in German]
M - R

Fate , Help , Perfection , Flowers

“I was pretty health-conscious even before going vegan. The transition came after I watched Food, Inc. and a documentary called GMO OMG.”

Wilson Chandler (1987) American basketball player

After that I went pescatarian for a while, but I went deeper and deeper with research. … Part of why I stopped eating meat is because the more acid is in your body, the harder it is for muscles to recover.
"The Real-Life Diet of Wilson Chandler, Nuggets Forward and Vegan" https://www.gq.com/story/wilson-chandler-real-life-vegan-diet, interview with GQ (December 6, 2016).

Health , Food

“Education does have a great role to play in this period of transition. But it is not either education or legislation; it is both education and legislation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important also. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often so and we have to do in society through legislation. We must depend on religion and education to change bad internal attitudes, but we need legislation to control the external effects of those bad internal attitudes. And so there is a need for meaningful civil right legislation.”

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

Address at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa (15 October 1962) https://news.cornellcollege.edu/dr-martin-luther-kings-visit-to-cornell-college/; also quoted in Wall Street Journal (13 November 1962), Notable & Quotable , p. 18
Variant:
It is true that behavior cannot be legislated, and legislation cannot make you love me, but legislation can restrain you from lynching me, and I think that is kind of important.
Address at Finney Chapel, Oberlin College (22 October 1964), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise, The Chronicle-Telegram (21 January 2008)
1960s

Religion , Law , Dependency , Bad luck

“I know that there are those that are saying to the individuals who are involved in the freedom struggle, slow up for a while; you’re pushing things too fast. Or they may say, adopt a policy of moderation. Well, if moderation means moving on toward the goal of justice, with wise restraint and calm reasonableness, then moderation is a great virtue, which all men of good will must seek to achieve during this tense period of transition. But if moderation means slowing up in the move for freedom, capitulating to the undemocratic practices of the guardians of a deadening status quo, then moderation is a tragic vice which all men of good will must condemn. The fact is, we can’t afford to slow up. We have our self-respect to maintain, but even more than that, because of our love for democracy and because of our love for America, we can’t afford to slow up.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Democracy , Justice , Freedom , Self-confidence

“The national question is not a phantasm of capitalist modernity. Nevertheless it was capitalist modernity which imposed the national question on society. The national society replaced religious community. However, the transition to a national society needs to overcome capitalist modernity if the nation is not to remain a disguise for repressive monopolies.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism

Communication , Question

“The national question is not a phantasm of capitalist modernity. Nevertheless it was capitalist modernity which imposed the national question on society. The national society replaced religious community. However, the transition to a national society needs to overcome capitalist modernity if the nation is not to remain a disguise for repressive monopolies.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism, p. 47

Communication , Question

“Is it possible to be a healthy vegetarian or vegan? I became vegan, let’s see, 32 years ago now. And, I run several miles every day, I go biking 40, 50 miles through the countryside, I work long hours, I feel great, it’s nice waking up with a light, trim body every day. And so many of my vegan friends, and patients, you know, are thriving, ever since their transition to a vegan diet. So, yes, and I’ve seen vegan moms go through healthy vegan pregnancies, deliver healthy vegan children, and raise them to tall, full-size, intelligent vegan adults. And, yes, certainly, all the nutrients are there in the plant kingdom to do this.”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film Cowspiracy by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (2014).

Light , Intelligence , Children , Moms

“[B]lock Offers and their popularity have diminished over time. It’s become less economic, particularly for offshore. We’ve been clear that we need to ensure we’re moving towards just transitions. It is a process for New Zealand to acknowledge that our future is not in fossil fuels. [...] It’s not where our future lies, but my plan is to transition our regions, not to jar them.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

Interview with Lisa Owen at Newshub Nation, 21 October 2017

Future , Time

“I grew up in Kentucky so that's the land of casseroles and barbecue and meat. So when I transitioned over to an entirely plant-based diet, I wasn't sure if I was gonna survive. And I actually became like a machine. […] I just immediately started feeling like I could go kick ass and not need the recovery in between. It was mind-blowing to my teammates. […] I was about ready to retire, as I should've been, because I'm like 35 at that time. But I just kept getting better, and so they had to take me to the Olympics. We were complete underdogs as Team USA. In our semi-final ride against Australia, we were down by 1.7 seconds. No one's ever come back in team pursuit from a deficit that large. And we beat them on the line by eight one-hundredths of a second. I was 39 and a half years old when I stood on the Olympic podium. I'm still the oldest person, male or female, to even go to the Olympic Games in my event. My diet was the most powerful aspect to me being able to perform and produce for the US team at the Olympic Games.”

Dotsie Bausch (1973) cyclist

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Personality , Game , Time , Feeling

“There are 2.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the United States. That’s fewer than Turkmenistan (7.4 beds per 1,000), Mongolia (7.0), Argentina (5.0) and Libya (3.7). In fact, the US ranks 69th out of 182 countries analyzed by the World Health Organization. This lack of hospital beds is forcing doctors across the country to ration care under Covid-19, pushing up the number of preventable deaths. America’s numbers are similarly unimpressive when it comes to medical doctors. The United States has 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, placing it behind Trinidad & Tobago (2.7), and Russia (4.0 doctors per 1,000, for a country that is described as being “in transition”). Life expectancies at birth are lower in the US than they are in Chile or China. The US has a higher maternal mortality rate than Iran or Saudi Arabia.”

Mona Chalabi (1987) British data journalist

Coronavirus is revealing how broken America’s economy really is, 6 April 2020

Death , Country , People , Health

“More controversially, technology can accelerate the transition from harming to helping free-living sentient beings: mankind's fitfully expanding "circle of compassion."”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

The civilising process needn't be species-specific but instead extend to free-living dwellers in tomorrow's wildlife parks. Every cubic metre of the biosphere will soon be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control. Fertility regulation via immunocontraception can replace Darwinian ecosystems governed by starvation and predation. Any species of obligate carnivore we choose to preserve can be genetically and behaviourally tweaked into harmlessness. Asphyxiation, disembowelling, and agonies of being eaten alive can pass into the dustbin of history.

" High-tech Jainism https://www.hedweb.com/transhumanism/neojainism.html", The World Transformed, Jul. 2014

Help

“I found for me personally the easiest way to think about things [in the transition to veganism] was to not actually think about the products I was boycotting as food, but for what they actually were—for instance, the flesh of an animal or the embryo of a chicken.”

Jona Weinhofen (1983) Australian singer

"Bring Me The Horizon’s Vegan Warrior" https://www.peta2.com/news/jona-weinhofen-vegan-peta2-ad/, interview with PETA (11 November 2011).

Food , Personality , Animals , Thinking

“I repeat: our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a budgetary surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy; or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve--and I believe this can be done--a budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness; the second reflects an investment in the future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Future

“My mandate (as the President of Benin) will be a mandate of rupture, transition and reforms.”

Patrice Talon (1958) Beninese president

Statement made during his presidential swearing-in ceremony in Porto-Novo, 6 April 2016.
Source: Patrice Talon (2016) cited in: " Businessman sworn in as Benin's president https://www.reuters.com/article/us-benin-election-idUSKCN0X31QO" in Reuters, 6 April 2016.

“Right now, the region is more interested in looking at options for rapid transit than they are for more lanes on those bridges, especially given that our local road networks can't quite handle more volume of traffic. People on the North Shore want choice.”

Bowinn Ma (1985) Canadian politician

North Shore News https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/ironworkers-bridge-sees-start-of-two-year-maintenance-project-3462200, Ironworkers bridge sees start of two-year maintenance project, February 26, 2021

People

“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.””

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

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.
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

Science , Laughter

“It’s never exactly a good time to step away -- transitions always have some rough edges -- but it’s always best to do so when the organization is strong, and before you’ve overstayed your welcome. The movement is in a good, strong place. Our communities are growing, our readership is too”

Katherine Maher (1983) chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation

Source: " Thanks for all the fish! / Stepping down April 15 https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/BXPWQ63CWPKMLWGA7KZRTGIMZTAVMUYW/" (February 4, 2021)

Strong , Communication , Time