Quotes about transparency (231 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Call on Me…
Call on Me..
Call on Me.

I am the Lover you dreamt about in your Angel filled Dreams.

I have sat awaiting your love for an eternity.

Please do not shun Me for I shall die.

My entire existance is the pure essence of You, My dear.

How you have entrapped Me like a Siren.

If I had known what I know now..

If only I had known what I know now.

I do not wish to exhibit My Undying Love for You, My dear.

However it is completely Transparent.

Awaken

and see me.

I am your Destiny.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Lovers , Dreams , Angels , Love

“Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

“The way that the background fields generates mass is rather like the way in which when light passes through a transparent medium like glass or water, it gets slowed down. It no longer travels with the fundamental velocity of light c. And that's the way to think of the generation of mass.”

Peter Higgs (1929) British physicist

in video Meet Peter Higgs by CERN (July 2004).

Way , Travel , Thinking , Light

“So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Life , People , Books , World

“Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

Virginia Woolf The Common Reader

"Modern Fiction"
The Common Reader (1925)
Context: Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.

Life

“The small wisdom is like water in a glass:
clear, transparent, pure.
The great wisdom is like the water in the sea:
dark, mysterious, impenetrable.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Wisdom , Water , Sea

“If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Soul , Understanding

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would […] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. […. ] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. […. ] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect […. ] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

As quoted in Benjamin Franta, "On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/01/on-its-hundredth-birthday-in-1959-edward-teller-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming, The Guardian, 1 January 2018.

People , Health , Question , Thinking

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

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

At the signing of executive orders on first full day as president, as reported in transparency, Obama OKs ethics guidelines" at CNN.com (21 January 2009) http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/21/obama.business/index.html"Vowing
2009

Law

“More broadly, I think that the -- if you look at some of the most successful countries in the world, they’re actually pretty small countries -- like Singapore, for example -- that on paper look like they have no assets, and yet, if you go to Singapore, it has one of the highest standards of living in the world. What is it that Singapore did that might be replicable? Well, one of the most important things they did was they made an enormous investment in their people. And if you’ve got a highly skilled, highly educated workforce, if you’ve set up rules of law and governance that are transparent and non-corrupt, then you can attract actually a lot of service industries to supplement the tourist industry, because people would want to locate in your country. You could envision people wanting to operate and have offices there where you’ve got a trained workforce. And these days, so many businesses are operating over the Internet that if you’ve got a really skilled workforce that provides value added, you will attract companies and you’ll attract businesses.”

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

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

People , World , Education , Law

“The goal is justice, the method is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

[Julian Assange Interviewed by John Pilger, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGUq0kYV-8Q]

Justice

“That’s why we’ve worked with other nations to create higher and clearer standards for banking and taxation -- because a society that asks less of oligarchs than ordinary citizens will rot from within. That’s why we’ve pushed for transparency and cooperation in rooting out corruption, and tracking illicit dollars, because markets create more jobs when they're fueled by hard work, and not the capacity to extort a bribe.”

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

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

“But I do believe that there are basic values that we all share. And one of those values is that countries work best when everybody has a voice that can be respected, and that the press is able to report on what is happening in current affairs, and people can organize politically peacefully to try to bring about change, and that there's transparency and accountability. And when you look at which countries have done best in terms of development, typically over time, those countries that have some accountability and some measure of personal freedom tend to do better. And those countries that don't, have more problems.”

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

Remarks by the President in YSEALI Town Hall at Taylor's University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (November 20, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/20/remarks-president-yseali-town-hall
2015

People , Problem , Freedom , Change

“Eyes so transparent that through them one sees the lucent soul.”

Théophile Gautier Paris

Ils sont si transparents qu'ils laissent voir votre âme.
"À Deux Beaux Yeux", line 12, in Poésies Complètes (Paris: Charpentier, 1845) p. 278; Maturin Murray Ballou (ed.) Notable Thoughts about Women (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882) p. 398.

Soul

“And that kind of economic growth, where everybody has opportunity -- if you work hard, you can succeed -- that's what gets a nation moving rapidly when it comes to develop. But that kind of growth can only be created if corruption is left behind. For investment to lead to opportunity, reform must promote budgets that are transparent and industry that is privately owned.”

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

2012, Yangon University Speech (November 2012)

“When, in youth, I learned what was called "philosophy" … no one ever mentioned to me the question of "meaning." Later, I became acquainted with Lady Welby's work on the subject, but failed to take it seriously. I imagined that logic could be pursued by taking it for granted that symbols were always, so to speak, transparent, and in no way distorted the objects they were supposed to "mean." Purely logical problems have gradually led me further and further from this point of view. Beginning with the question whether the class of all those classes which are not members of themselves is, or is not, a member of itself; continuing with the problem whether the man who says "I am lying" is lying or speaking the truth; passing through the riddle "is the present King of France bald or not bald, or is the law of excluded middle false?" I have now come to believe that the order of words in time or space is an ineradicable part of much of their significance – in fact, that the reason they can express space-time occurrences is that they are space-time occurrences, so that a logic independent of the accidental nature of spacetime becomes an idle dream. These conclusions are unpleasant to my vanity, but pleasant to my love of philosophical activity: until vitality fails, there is no reason to be wedded to one's past theories.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Review of The Meaning of Meaning (1926), p. 114

Love , Truth , Youth , Law

“Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Literature and Marxism (1924)

Feeling

“I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.
That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.
Now, there is no straight line to realise this promise. But this much is clear: governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure.”

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

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

Life , War , People , Peace

“We know that our economies attract more trade and investment when citizens are free to start a new business without paying a bribe. We know that our societies are more likely to succeed when all our people -- regardless of color, or class, or creed, or sexual orientation, or gender -- are free to live and pray and love as they choose. […] And, increasingly, civil society is a source of ideas -- about everything from promoting transparency and free expression, to reversing inequality and rescuing our environment.”

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

2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)

Love , People , Color , Idea

“You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency — your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)
Context: You are not the oil, you are not the air — merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency — your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means.

Life , Light

“People often relate childish behaviour to stupidity or foolishness. This needs to change. I want to level the playing field where I can learn from children. I can learn transparency from children. They're innocent and straightforward.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

Times of India interview (2014)
Context: I'm a friend of the children. No one should see them as pitiable subjects. People often relate childish behaviour to stupidity or foolishness. This needs to change. I want to level the playing field where I can learn from children. I can learn transparency from children. They're innocent and straightforward.

Children , People , Stupidity , Learning

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

The Blood of Others [Le sang des autres] (1946)
General sources

Life , Freedom

“This was a nightmare scenario for any bodyguard: stuck in the middle of a transparent tube, several miles underwater, with a murdering band of fugitives at one end and an enthralled but still highly skilled police officer at the other.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

“The shorter the chain between raw food and fork, the fresher it is and the more transparent the system is.”

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Source: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

Food

“I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Carmilla

Source: Carmilla

Effort

“There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Beauty , Falseness

“In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Heart

“Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

No Place to Hide (2014)
Source: No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
Context: Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name. [... ] Conversely, the presumption is that the government, with rare exceptions, will not know anything that law-abiding citizens are doing. [... ] Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else.

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 209.

Exercises

“I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.”

Isabel Allende book Portrait in Sepia

Source: Portrait in Sepia

Truth , Beauty , Autumn , Reality

“Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Life , World , Time

“A moment later Jonathan’s body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. “Don’t let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O. K., Fletch? I’m a seagull. I like to fly, maybe…”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

God , Flying

“I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

People , Personality

“But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Thinking , Time

“Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.”

Michael Pollan book The Omnivore's Dilemma

Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), p. 333.
Context: The industrialization — and brutalization — of animals in America is a relatively new, evitable, and local phenomenon: No other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do. No other people in history has lived at quite so great a remove from the animals they eat. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.

Way , Animals

“My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“There is a famous saying: "If the mind is not contrived, it is spontaneously blissful, just as water, when not agitated, is by nature transparent and clear".”

Sogyal Rinpoche (1947–2019) Tibetan Dzogchen lama of the Nyingma tradition

Nature , Water

“King Kong was difficult only because of the hours we had to put in. At that time, there was no protection for actors about time or anything. We worked straight through for 22 hours once on Kong. It was really a wearying experience, because it was mechanics, really, as much as anything that we were dealing with. The technicality was transparency to transparency from the rear, and then re-photographing me in the foreground on the same level with that screen-so I couldn't really see what was happening at all! It had to be done many, many times to confirm that it was okay. So we worked for 22 hours!”

Fay Wray (1907–2004) actress

Rick McKay's Night on the Town with Fay Wray! http://www.rickmckay.com/Rick%20McKay%20-%20Fay%20Wray%20Interview.html (1998)

Time

“By virtue of its innermost intention, and like all questions about language, structuralism escapes the classical history of ideas which already supposes structuralism’s possibility, for the latter naively belongs to the province of language and propounds itself within it. Nevertheless, by virtue of an irreducible region of irreflection and spontaneity within it, by virtue of the essential shadow of the undeclared, the structuralist phenomenon will deserve examination by the historian of ideas. For better or for worse. Everything within this phenomenon that does not in itself transparently belong to the question of the sign will merit this scrutiny; as will everything within it that is methodologically effective, thereby possessing the kind of infallibil-ity now ascribed to sleepwalkers and formerly attributed to instinct, which was said to be as certain as it was blind.”

Jacques Derrida book Writing and Difference

Force and Signification
Writing and Difference (1978)

History , Idea , Question

“Style should be like window-glass, perfectly transparent, and with very little sash.”

Nathaniel Emmons (1745–1840) American clergy

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 481.

“You were transparent a minute ago!”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

WTF Is…? series, Guise of the Wolf (January 26, 2014), Research stream

“Now one may ask, How could a Christian philosophy have something over a non-Christian philosophy, if it does not reach to a higher level of solutions, if it cannot get handy answers, if the problems and questions are still there? Well, perhaps a greater truth could be present in its ability to see the world in its truly mysterious character, in its inexhaustablity. It could even be the case that here, in the very experience of being as a mystery, that it is not to be grasped in the hand as a "well-rounded truth" — herein is reality more deeply and truly grasped than in any transparent system that may charm the mind of the student with its clarity and simplicity. And this is the claim of Christian philosophy: to be truer, precisely because of its recognition of the mysterious character of the world.
In no way, then, does philosophy become easier. Plato appears to have discovered and felt that too — if a certain interpretation of Plato is correct, maintaining that Plato understood philosophy to be something tragic for this reason, that it must constantly have recourse to mythos, since the teaching of philosophy can never close itself into a system.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 127–128
The "interpretation of Plato" referred to is that of Gerhard Krüger, Einsicht und Leidenschaft (Frankfurt, 1939), p. 301.

Truth , World , Way , Question

“There is no lack of diagnoses of the manifold ills that beset the international order, coherent and even convincing diagnoses by foremost think tanks, universities and outstanding individual researchers all over the world. Obstacles to an improved world order are evident, but remedies do not materialize. Is it because the real power no longer resides in States and Governments but rather in the economy, the intelligence community, the military-industrial and financial-industrial complexes, which are neither democratic nor transparent and operate impervious to reasons other than power or profit? The answers are complex and require further research, which may contribute to future reports on the vast menu of General Assembly resolution 67/175.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013

World , Intelligence , Communication , Thinking

“Although I can look a bit grumpy myself, I love it when the sun shines in the water, but besides that I think my country is colored and what I particularly noticed when I came from abroad: our country is colored sappy fat, that's why our beautiful- colored and built cattle, their flesh, milk and butter, nowhere you can find this, but they [the cows] are also fed by that sappy, greasy and colored land - I have often heard strangers say, those Dutch painters all paint gray and their land is green.... the more I observe the more colored and transparent nature becomes and then the air seen altogether, something very different and yet so [strong] in harmony, it is delightful when one has learned to see, because that too must be learned, I repeat, our country is not gray, even not in gray weather, the dunes aren't gray either.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: Alhoewel ik er zelf wat knorrig uit kan zien houd ik er veel van dat het zonnetje in het water schijnt, maar buiten dat ik vind mijn land gekleurd en wat mij bijzonder opviel wanneer ik uit den vreemde kwam: ons land is gekleurd sappig vet, vandaar onze schoone gekleurde en gebouwde runderen, hun vleesch melk en boter, nergens vind men dat zoo maar ze worden ook door dat sappige vette en gekleurde land gevoed - ik heb vreemdelingen dikwijls horen zeggen, die Hollandsche schilders schilderen allemaal grijs en hun land is groen.. ..hoe meer ik opserveer hoe gekleurder en transparanter de natuur word en dan de lucht erbij gezien een heel ander iets en toch zoo in harmonie, het is verrukkelijk wanneer men heeft leeren zien, want ook dat moet geleerd worden, ik herhaal het ons land is niet grijs, zelfs niet bij grijs weer, de duinen zijn ook niet grijs.
written note of Paul Gabriël, 1901; as cited in De Haagse School. Hollandse meesters van de 19de eeuw, ed. R. de Leeuw, J. Sillevis en C. Dumas); exhibition. cat. - Parijs, Grand Palais / Londen, Royal Academy of Arts / Den Haag, Haags Gemeentemuseum, Parijs, Londen, Den Haag 1983, p.183 - 23
after 1900

Love , Beauty , Color , Nature

“The path to a democratic and equitable order is through the expansion of public courts, not the creation of private courts with questionable transparency, accountability or independence.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20473&LangID=E#sthash.bn9VjkJJ.dpuf.
2016, Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report

Question

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

Life , World , Feeling , Question

“I laugh at it today, now that I have had all the good of it. Let the bridge blow up, provided I have got my troops across… Nonetheless, that book was a terrible risk. A transparent leaf separates it from madness.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

On Ulysses, as quoted in James Joyce: The Critical Heritage (1997) by Robert H. Deming, p. 22

Books , Madness

“After a time the minute colourless particles which are imbedded in the flowing protoplasm are drawn towards and unite with the aggregated masses; so that the protoplasm on the walls being now rendered quite transparent is no longer visible, though some is still present, and still flows, as may be inferred from the occasional transport of particles in the cell-sap.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

"The action of carbonate of ammonia on chlorophyll-bodies" Journal of the Linnean Society of London (Botany) (read 6 March 1882) volume 19, pages 262-284, at page 262 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=F1801&viewtype=text
Detractors sometimes claim Darwin thought that the cell was an undifferentiated mass of protoplasm. Anyone reading this paper will realize that Darwin thought no such thing.
Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements

Time

“Despite overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic influence, there is a tendency for those with pronounced free-market views to reject the reality of global warming. The reason underpinning this is transparent – if one accepts human-mediated climate change, then supporting mitigating action should follow. But the demon of regulation is a bridge too far for many libertarians. Given that climate change affects everyone whether they consent to it or not, then unregulated use of natural resources infringes the property rights of others and is ideologically equivalent to trespass, so the tenuous property rights house of cards comes crashing down.When faced with this ideological dilemma, free-market advocates often resolve the cognitive dissonance by simply rejecting the reality of climate change, rather than acknowledging that their axiom is fundamentally flawed.”

David Robert Grimes (1985) researcher

"Libertarian ideology is the natural enemy of science," The Guardian August 29, 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/aug/29/libertarian-ideology-natural-enemy-science

Support , Nature , Reality , Change

“Tony Cairo [English abstract sculptor] and I tried to collaborate at several points and it hasn't been successful. As a matter of fact, recently Tony has made sculpture that I have painted. He has to make the sculpture before I can paint it. That means that the form is taking precedence – that the material takes precedence as a form, rather than color establishing the form. It's not going to well but I'm working on it. There's something about color that is so abstract that it is difficult for it to function in conjunction with solid form... Color has properties of weight, density, transparency, and so forth. And when it also has to be compatible with things that have an actual density, a given form, it's very difficult.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105

Color , Success , Painting

“I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only thing I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun spreading across the late afternoon, setting the top of the orchard on fire while darkness collected underneath. Silence had hovered over my head, beauty multiplying in the air, the trees so transparent I felt like I could see through to something pure inside them. My chest ached then, too, this very same way.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Beauty , Way , Feeling , Thinking

“It crept upon me--the restlessness, the loneliness. What was the matter…Then it came to me like crashing and thunder, like death and destruction. I got up from the counter and walked away in fear, walking fast down the boardwalk, passing people who seemed strange and ghostly: the world seemed a myth, a transparent plane, and all things upon it were here for only a little while…”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Death , People , World , Fear

“Government must be a transparent garment which tightly clings to the people’s body.”

Georg Büchner Danton's Death

Act I.
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

People

“To understand this radiation [ cosmic microwave background ], it is easier to begin thinking about the radiation from a very hot gas like that inside a neon light. The same neon… is, at room temperature, utterly transparent… The character of matter in general changes abruptly when it gets heated above 3,000 degrees or so. Below this temperature, matter is electrically neutral… At high temperatures in a neon light, the electrically charged pieces of atoms become unstuck. Frequent and violent collisions break down neutral atoms into electrons and unbalanced nuclei. Matter in this state is called plasma, and it radiates much of its collision energy in the form of light. …a gas of neutral atoms (like air) is virtually transparent. The free [charged] nuclei and electrons of plasma, by contrast, couple to light's electromagnetic fields and absorb it very efficiently. …You …see light only from the borderline layer of neon between opaque plasma and transparent neutral atoms.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Understanding , Thinking , Light , Change

“Modern institutions are transparently purposive and that we are in the midst of an evolutionary progression toward more efficient forms.”

Frank Dobbin (1956) American sociologist

Frank Dobbin (1994), "Organizational Models of Culture: The social construction of rational organizing principles," in: Diana Crane (ed) The Sociology of Culture: Emerging theoretical perspectives. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 138; As cited in: Kieran Healy (1998)

“The most beautiful discoveries since the Renaissance, indeed since the beginnings of all science, are the laws governing light, whether moving through a uniform medium, or being reflected from an opaque surface, or changing direction upon entering another transparent medium.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

Law , Beauty , Light , Science

“The movement of radical transparency and accountability is not about putting a new person in charge, it’s about getting rid of the whole idea of hierarchal politics. It’s about decentralizing power.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

International Journalism Festival http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/heather-brooke-antitrust-legislation-needed-to-keep-the-internet-free/ Interview with Fabio Chiusi, 12 April 2012.
Attributed, In the Media

Idea , Personality

“A little while ago, not much more than a few days ago, I was a child who went about in a world of colors, of hard and tangible forms. Everything was mysterious and something was hidden, guessing what it was was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to know suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning elucidated the earth. Now I live in a painful planet, transparent as ice; but it is as if I had learned everything at once in seconds.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote of Frida Kahlo, in her letter to Alejandro Gómez Arias, 29 September 1926
1925 - 1945

Pain , World , Color , Game

“This is the problem with the argument that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear: it ignores the issue of power. If we are not careful, transparency can be used to increase, rather than reduce, the information asymmetry between ruler and ruled.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

Fear , Problem

“The problem with WikiLeaks is that it’s been taken over by Julian Assange, and that is directly opposed to what the whole movement is meant to be about: decentralized power, collaboration, equality and transparency. Under Julian Assange, WikiLeaks has become exactly the opposite of all of these things: it’s become totally centralized, it’s become a hierarchy, it’s not transparent. And it’s not collaborative, but incredibly divisive in the transparency community, because anybody who dares to challenge or criticize Julian comes under severe fire from him. A person who’s meant to be a leader of a movement, which is what he claims to be, you’re meant to be about building and accruing allies, rather than going into the movement and being divisive. But that’s exactly what he’s been.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

International Journalism Festival http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/heather-brooke-antitrust-legislation-needed-to-keep-the-internet-free/ Interview with Fabio Chiusi, 12 April 2012.
Attributed, In the Media

Communication , Problem , Personality

“While the outward face of democracy may be a multiparty system and regular elections, some observers contend that there is a substantial difference between the right to vote and the right to choose policies. If the choice of candidates for election does not correspond to the desires of the people, then a pro forma election among candidates who have been put up by political machines does not further the credibility or legitimacy of such democracies. This is not democracy but “partitocracy”. If the only choices are between candidates A and B, whose programmes are often very similar, the electorate does not have a real voice and the election does not satisfy the essence of what democratic government must be. In such cases, the two-party system shows itself to be twice as democratic as the oneparty system. True democracy requires real choices as well as transparent and accountable governance and administration in all sectors of society.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred Maurice de Zayas http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A.67.277_en.pdf.
2012

People , Democracy

“If self-knowledge does not lead to knowing oneself before God - well, then there is something to what purely human self-observation says, namely, this self-knowledge leads to a certain emptiness that produces dizziness. Only by being before God can one totally come to oneself in the transparency of soberness. p. 106”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

God , Knowledge

“In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it.”

Yasunari Kawabata book Snow Country

Snow Country (1948)

World , Beauty , Girl , Mountain

“When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews

“Love — but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife — you know all about her — who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream?”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: Confessions of a Young Man http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12278/12278-h/12278-h.htm (1886), Ch. 9.

Love , Marriage , Dreams , Way

“We have long supported a carbon tax as the best policy of those being considered. Replacing the hodge-podge of current, largely ineffective regulations with a revenue-neutral carbon tax would ensure a uniform and predictable cost of carbon across the economy. It would allow market forces to drive solutions. It would maximize transparency, reduce administrative complexity, promote global participation and easily adjust to future developments in our understanding of climate science as well as the policy consequences of these actions.”

Rex Tillerson (1952) 69th United States Secretary of State

"The Path Forward in Today’s Energy Environment," http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/company/news-and-updates/speeches/the-path-forward-in-todays-energy-environment a speech made as Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, at the 37th Annual Oil and Money Conference in London on (19 October 2016).

Understanding , Support , Science , Future

“The whole landscape lies behind the transparent gauze of the fog that now rises, drawn upwards by the sun, and as it rises, reveals the silver-spangled river, the fields, the cottages, the further scene. At last one can discern all that one could only guess at before... The sun is up! There is a peasant at the end of the field, with his wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen... Everything is bursting into life, sparkling in the full light – light, which as yet is still soft and golden. The background, simple in line and harmonious in colour, melts into the infinite expanse of sky, through the bluish, misty atmosphere. The flowers raise their heads the birds flutter hither and thither... The little rounded willows on the bank of the stream look like birds spreading their tails. It's adorable! And one paints! And paints!”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Corot's description of a morning in Switzerland, Château de Gruyères, 1857, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963
1850s

Life , Flowers , Bird , Light

“The ‘Digital India’ initiative is one of the key measures to make government transparent, responsive and citizen friendly. The objective is to create a digitally empowered society and infuse technology into government, healthcare and education. From creating infrastructure to services, from manufacture of products to human resource development, from enabling citizens to promoting digital literacy, ‘Digital India’ aims to impact all aspects of life in India.”

Sushma Swaraj (1952–2019) Indian politician

On Digital India, BGR (February 7, 2016), "India ready to offer assistance to Sri Lanka in IT sector: Sushma Swaraj" http://www.bgr.in/news/india-ready-to-offere-assistance-to-sri-lanka-in-it-sector-sushma-swaraj/

Life , Education

“.. can you [contemporary painters] ever get close, even vaguely, to the solidity, the transparency, the lyric strength of colour, to the clarity, the mystery, the emotion of any of the paintings of Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Dürer, Holbein or of young Raphael? Friends, have you ever realized that with the oil colours used today this is absolutely impossible?... In the museums of Europe I have observed the work of the Flemish painters at length – those earlier, later as well as contemporary to the [brothers] Van Eycks – and I am convinced that the above mentioned brothers were not the discoverers of oil paint in its true sense, as is held today, but that what they did was introduce oil in emulsion with other substances, especially live and fossil resins, into so-called oil tempera emulsion, which was already known in the Flanders, to enable them through the use of veiling to give a greater finish, cleanliness and strength of colour to their painting.
'These oils which are their tempera' said Vasari, speaking of the Flemish [painters] in his Life of Antonello; and without doubt he was alluding to Flemish oil tempera emulsion, but it is sure, absolutely sure, that.... we are dealing with.... a tempera based mixture (egg, glue, resin, tempera etc) in which oil was only used as a means of unity and for the finish of the painting.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Chirico's text 'Pro tempera oratio', c. 1920; from 'PRO TEMPERA ORATIO' http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/475-480Metafisica5_6.pdf, p. 475
1920s and later

Life , Sense , Painting

“Budget and fiscal transparency are necessary tools to prevent the hijacking of the international order by the international military-industrial complex.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order exploring the adverse impacts of military expenditures on the realization of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

“I hold that the first form of a body is the first corporeal mover. But this is light, which as it multiplies itself and expands without the body of matter moving with it, makes its passage instantaneously through the transparent medium and is not motion but a state of change. But, indeed, when light is expanding itself in different directions it is incorporated with matter, if the body of matter extends with it, and it makes a rarefaction or augmentation of matter; for when light is itself charged with the body of matter, it produces condensation or rarefaction. So when light generates itself in one direction drawing matter with it, it produces local motion; and when light within matter is sent out and what is outside is sent in, it produces qualitative change. From this it is clear that corporeal motion is a multiplicative power of light, and this is a corporeal and natural appetite.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

see De Luce Tr. Ludwig Baur (1912) pp. 51-52
De Luce seu de Inchoatione Formarum (c. 1215-1220)

Nature , Light , Change , Drawing

“I remember that night. It was late at night—in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students—and I worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. 'One could make an animal—a tissue—transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments—I could be invisible!' I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars. 'I could be invisible!' I repeated.

To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none.”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 19: Certain First Principles

Star , Knowledge , Freedom , Light

“As a general rule, therefore, the lights and shadows of clouds near the horizon are less vivid than in clouds higher up. Exceptions to this rough rule will be found when the source of light is near the horizon, as in sunset and sunrise, also when there is a gathering of local stormclouds which may hover over the distance as a dark pall, when there is fair weather and light, transparent clouds near to us.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Perspective of clouds, p. 100

Light , Weather

“We have to be truthful and transparent. If by being transparent we will be punished, then there's nothing we can do about it. We will still continue to be transparent.”

Lim Guan Eng (1960) Finance Minister of Malaysia

Lim Guan Eng (2018) cited in " Economy remains strong, fundamentals solid, says Guan Eng https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2018/05/25/economy-remains-strong-fundamentals-solid-says-guan-eng/" on The Star Online, 25 May 2018

Truth

“Getting information is only the beginning. Transparency in government must be accompanied by the public's right to be heard and to influence government policy. The first objective is to get the facts, for without facts we are powerless to oppose government decisions or bring about change. The next step is to open up the decision-making process so we finally have a government accountable to those it serves. This should be our right and not a privilege.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 8.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Decision , Change

“One can derive the same fun from print-making as from making mud pies and great subtlety can be achieved through the use of transparent inks, half-tone screens and even accidental colour combinations, which is often where the art hides.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

Own Goals, p. 314
The Joke's Over (2006)

Art

“Let me be transparent about my affection for cops. When you dial 911, whether you are white or black, the cops come, and they come quickly, and they come quickly whether they are white or black. That’s what cops do, in addition to all of the other hard and difficult and dangerous and frightening things that they do. They respond to homes in the middle of the night where a drunken father, wielding a gun, is threatening his wife and children. They pound up the back stairs of an apartment building, not knowing whether the guys behind the door they are about to enter are armed, or high, or both.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Children , Guy , Home , Night

“"Global Warming" represents the last gasp of so-called "scientific progressivism", a mass of pitifully transparent falsehoods being employed to justify reducing mankind under the absolute despotism of "experts", the obvious implication being that we can’t even breathe responsibly. Environmentalism, Gaianism, is a religion on the basis of which — illegally under the First Amendment — public policy is being generated. Exhaling carbon dioxide is Original Sin, a reliable source of unlimited power and wealth to a Parasitic Class of politicians, bureaucrats, and cops with which our civilization now finds itself infested.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Wanna Buy a Future?"

Religion , Wealth

“Huge bodies of vapour—a storm in each—were hurrying over a sky, dashed alike with the hues of the tempest and the morning; some of the vapours were of inky blackness, others spread like a scroll of royal purple; some undulated with the light struggling through, others were of transparent whiteness; but those upon the east were of a deep crimson—and the round, red sun had just mounted above an enormous old cedar. Red hues were cast upon everything; even the lilies blushed, and the waters of the little fountain were like melted rubies…”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Light , Water , Sun

“'What do you mean by "a man like me"?' he [Philip Trent] demanded with a sort of fierceness. 'Do you take me for a man without any normal instincts? I don't say you impress people as a simple, transparent sort of character — what Mr Calvin Bunner calls a case of openwork; I don't say a stranger might not think you capable of wickedness, if there was good evidence for it: but I say that a man who, after seeing you and being in your atmosphere, could associate you with the kind of abomination I imagined is a fool — the kind of fool who is afraid to trust his senses.'”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Last Case

Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter XIII: "Eruption"

People , Fools , Imagination , Thinking

“I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.”

John Updike book The Centaur

The Centaur (1963)

Truth , Beauty , Hope , Nature

“Here sees he the illustrious dead
Who fighting for their country bled;
Priests who while earthly life remained
Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained;
Blest bards, transparent souls and clear,
Whose song was worthy Phoebus' ear;
Inventors who by arts refined
The common lot of human kind,
With all who grateful memory won
By services to others done:
A goodly brotherhood, bedight
With coronals of virgin white.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 217

Life , Art , Soul , Memory

“Make my breast
Transparent as pure crystal, that the world,
Jealous of me, may see the foulest thought
My heart holds.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Beaumont and Fletcher Philaster, Act III, sc. ii, line 144.
These lines are used almost unaltered ("holds" becoming "does hold") in Act III, sc. ii of Buckingham's The Restauration, an adaptation of Philaster. They appear with an attribution to Buckingham in many 19th century collections of quotations, e.g. Henry George Bohn A Dictionary of Quotations from the English Poets (1867) p. 63, and hence also on several quotation websites.
Misattributed

World , Heart

“We must have a new commitment to excellence and transparency at MU. The leadership of the school failed the students who expected more from the great university they chose to attend. Professor Click, on the grounds of an institution that is supposed to carry the banner of free thought and expression, on a campus with one of the world’s leading journalism schools -- trampled on the First Amendment, the very sacred defender of individual thought. The actions of a rogue professor and rudderless leaders have embarrassed the university and our state. To begin moving forward, it is long past time for the University to remove Professor Click. We must renew our commitment to Mizzou, which really is a commitment to the students, who are the future of our great state.”

Eric Schmitt (1975) American politician, lawyer

Reforming Mizzou: Earning back the taxpayers’ trust http://www.columbiatribune.com/bf4d55bb-fee4-5a97-8341-2824a3baba05.html (January 10, 2016)

World , School , Universe , Time

“Guys are so transparent most of the time. Unless, of course, they're dating you, in which case they are utter mysteries.”

Nicole Richie book The Truth About Diamonds

Source: The Truth About Diamonds (2005), p. 15

Guy , Time

“Participation by the public in decision-making, which requires full information, transparency and accountability, is essential to the democratic order. Parliaments have a special responsibility to oversee the adoption of national budgets and to monitor the actual use of appropriations so as to ferret out corruption.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Disarm and develop – UN expert urges win-win proposition for States and peoples
2014

Decision

“Transparency helps ensure that power is not abused or used to make the powerful, or their immediate families, rich. There is also a genuine public interest in ensuring that the people who make laws and levy tax are following those laws and paying their fair share of tax.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

People , Family , Law , Help

“Children wear their natures like brightly-colored clothes; that’s why they lie so transparently. Adulthood is the art of deceit.”

Robert Charles Wilson book The Chronoliths

Source: The Chronoliths (2001), Chapter 13 (p. 156)

Children , Lie , Art , Color

“For you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary ‘obviousness’ (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc.). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word ‘name a thing’ or ‘have a meaning’ (therefore including the obviousness of the ‘transparency’ of language), the ‘obviousness’ that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are ‘obviousnesses’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 116

Problem , Appearance

“It had long been established in the Civil Worlds that public business was to be transparent, and personal business opaque; but it was as well recognised that the two would always have a turbulent interface, and that the clique, the caucus, and the conspiracy were as ineradicable features of civility as the council or the committee.”

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 9 “Red Sun Circle” (pp. 136-137)

World , Business , Personality

“We have reached that delightful moment when 'Impressionism' is about to be born, when its light (the formula for which has yet to be found) is still only a hint, a caress, in the silvery snows of Monet or in the pale skies of Pissarro. Ah, how one would like to prolong this moment of hesitation for ever, this moment of transition, when transparent blue shadows are putting black shadows to flight and bitumen disappears!”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Source: Posthumous publications, Portrait of Manet by himself and his contemporaries (1960), p. 212.

Light

“It was not knowing that was the seed of madness, loneliness, fear. But there were ways to solve all this. Clarity had made her knowable to the world, and had made her better, had brought her close, she hoped, to perfection. Now the world would follow. Full transparency would bring full access, and there would be no more not-knowing. Mae smiled, thinking about how simple it all was, how pure. Bailey shared her smile.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle (2013), p. 470

World , Fear , Smile , Hope

“[Description of Britain] Its plains are spacious, its hills are pleasantly situated, adapted for superior tillage, and its mountains are admirably calculated for the alternate pasturage of cattle, where flowers of various colours, trodden by the feet of man, give it the appearance of a lovely picture. It is decked, like a man's chosen bride, with divers jewels, with lucid fountains and abundant brooks wandering over the snow white sands; with transparent rivers, flowing in gentle murmurs, and offering a sweet pledge of slumber to those who recline upon their banks, whilst it is irrigated by abundant lakes, which pour forth cool torrents of refreshing water.”
[Descriptio Britanniae] Campis late pansis collibusque amoeno situ locatis, praepollenti culturae aptis, montibus alternandis animalium pastibus maxime covenientibus, quorum diversorum colorum flores humanis gressibus pulsati non indecentem ceu picturam eisdem imprimebant, electa veluti sponsa monilibus diversis ornata, fontibus lucidis crebris undis niveas veluti glareas pellentibus, pernitidisque rivis leni murmure serpentibus ipsorumque in ripis accubantibus suavis soporis pignus praetendentibus, et lacubus frigidum aquae torrentem vivae exundantibus irrigua.

Gildas De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae

Section 3.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

Love , Mountain , Flowers , Water

“Most worrisome are the ISDS arbitrations, which constitute an attempt to escape the jurisdiction of national courts and bypass the obligation of all states to ensure that all legal cases are tried before independent tribunals that are public, transparent, accountable and appealable.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

UN calls for suspension of TTIP talks over fears of human rights abuses http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/may/04/ttip-united-nations-human-right-secret-courts-multinationals.
2015

“Adela returned on luminous mornings, like Pomona from the fire of the enkindled day, tipping from her basket the colourful beauty of the sun: glistening wild cherries, full of water under their transparent skins, mysterious black cherries whose aroma surpassed that which would be realised in their taste, and apricots, in whose golden pulp lay the core of the long afternoons.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“August” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/august1.htm
His father, Adela (the domestic servant)

Beauty , Water , Sun

“I would like to stress that, we would be happy to see normal cross-strait exchanges based on equality and dignity, openness and transparency, and no political talks.”

Tsai Ing-wen (1956) President of the Republic of China

Tsai sees ‘manipulation’ in play, Taipei Times, 1, November 5, 2015, 5 November 2015 http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2015/11/05/2003631718,

Happiness

“With regard to migration, I welcome Europe’s increasing movement towards a sensible policy and sensible measures. I would like to make it clear that recently Hungary has closed all the legal loopholes, and it is also prepared for the potential failure of the agreement between the EU and Turkey. At the Hungarian-Serbian border we are able to stop a migration flow of any size. Hungary has also taken the first steps towards elimination of the migrant business: several NGOs clearly see the migrant issue as a business issue, so we shall create conditions for the full transparency of NGOs in Hungary. In my opinion, on the whole we are moving closer to a sensible policy. Those arguments are invalid which seek to link the issue of migration to funding which European policy entitles us to. In the future I shall continue to maintain that we in the V4 must not allow ourselves to be intimidated: we must remain committed to a sensible migrant policy.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Speech after the meeting of the Visegrád Four http://www.miniszterelnok.hu/prime-minister-viktor-orbans-speech-after-the-meeting-of-the-visegrad-four/, 28 March 2017, Warsaw

Failure , Business , Future

“Those without it can be two-faced. Those with it are true-faced. There is no substitute for being transparent and real. The more real we are, the more likely we'll experience it.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

“Many economists would have you believe that their field is an objective science. I disagree, and I think that it is equally a tool that humans use to enforce and encode our social and moral preferences and prejudices about status and power, which is why plutocrats like me have always needed to find persuasive stories to tell everyone else about why our relative positions are morally righteous and good for everyone: like, we are indispensable, the job creators, and you are not; like, tax cuts for us create growth, but investments in you will balloon our debt and bankrupt our great country; that we matter; that you don't. For thousands of years, these stories were called divine right. Today, we have trickle-down economics. How obviously, transparently self-serving all of this is.”

Nick Hanauer (1959) American businessman

"Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming" TED (conference) August 2014 http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming/transcript?language=en

Thinking , Science , Country

“The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of indifference. I will leave it to be considered whether there can be a romanticism, an aesthetic of the neutral therein. I don't think so — all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us. Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances, and to dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion par excellence, it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are fascinated by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and fascinated, such is our general situation in an era of involuntary transparency.
I am a nihilist.
I observe, I accept, I assume the immense process of the destruction of appearances (and of the seduction of appearances) in the service of meaning (representation, history, criticism, etc.) that is the fundamental fact of the nineteenth century.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: 1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1988), Ch. 18 : On Nihilism, translation by Sheila Faria Glaser.

History , Thinking , Appearance , Passion

“Respect for human rights requires transparent and accountable institutions and governance as well as the effective participation of all individuals and civil society, who are an essential part of realizing social and people-centred sustainable development.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

India: Urgent call to halt Odisha mega-steel project amid serious human rights concerns http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13805&LangID=E.
2013

People , Parting