Quotes about try
page 26

“Q: …would he possibly stand under a sign that says "Mission Accomplished" today as he did three years ago?
Scott McClellan: Well, Peter, I think that there are some Democrats that refuse to recognize the important milestone achieved by the formation of a national unity government. And there is an effort simply to distract attention away from the real progress that is being made by misrepresenting and distorting the past. And that really does nothing to help advance our goal of achieving victory in Iraq.
Q: Scott, simple yes or no question, could the President stand under a sign that says --
Scott McClellan: No, see, this is -- this is a way that --
Q: It has nothing to do with Democrats.
Scott McClellan: Sure it does.
Q: I'm asking you, based on a reporter's curiosity, could he stand under a sign again that says, "Mission Accomplished"?
Scott McClellan: Now, Peter, Democrats have tried to raise this issue, and, like I said, misrepresenting and distorting the past --
Q: This is not --
Scott McClellan: -- which is what they're doing, does nothing to advance the goal of victory in Iraq.
Q: I mean, it's a historical fact that we're all taking notice of --
Scott McClellan: Well, I think the focus ought to be on achieving victory in Iraq and the progress that's being made, and that's where it is. And you know exactly the Democrats are trying to distort the past.
Q: Let me ask it another way: Has the mission been accomplished?
Scott McClellan: Next question.
Q: Has the mission been accomplished?
Scott McClellan: We're on the way to accomplishing the mission and achieving victory.”

Scott McClellan (1968) Former White House press secretary

Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060501-4.html, May 1, 2006

Way, Question, Thinking, Effort

“Confronted with such a variety most philosophers try to establish one approach to the exclusion of all others. As far as they are concerned there can only be one true way- and they want to find it. Thus normative philosophers argue that knowledge is a result of the application of certain rules, they propose rules which in their opinion constitute knowledge and reject what clashes with them.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

Pg 84.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

Way, Knowledge

“Bush said, in a big memorial service the other day, we've come to mourn and grieve and try to make some kind of sense out of this senseless tragedy that makes no sense. Well, wrong, President Bush. It makes perfect sense, to those who believe the Bible. [The victims of the massacre] died for America's sins and persecuting Westboro Baptist Church.”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, Virginia Tech Massacre: God's Wrath (2007)

Sense, Memory, Perfection

“I am a very peaceful man. I love people and am known for my gregarious personality. However, if you try to confiscate my guns, I will feel compelled to give them to you, one bullet at a time.”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

Source: Good to be King (2004)

Love, People, Peace, Feeling

“I am working for the courage to admit the truth that Bertolt Brecht has written; he says, "It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak."
I cherish the mercy and the grace of women’s work. But I know there is new work that we must undertake as well: that new work will make defeat detestable to us. That new women’s work will mean we will not die trying to stand up: we will live that way: standing up.
I came too late to help my mother to her feet.
By way of everlasting thanks to all of the women who have helped me to stay alive I am working never to be late again.”

June Jordan (1936–2002) Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist

"Many Rivers To Cross" (1981)

Women, Truth, Way, Courage

“The Vietnam War is behind us but not entirely forgotten. Like our Civil War, Vietnam holds a fascination for many Americans, and I suspect that this will grow rather than diminish as research continues and new works are published about the war. For the older military professionals who served during the Vietnam War and for the still older career military men who were perplexed by it, my advice is to look at Vietnam in a broader historical perspective. For the young military professional who did not serve in Vietnam, my advice is to learn all you can about the war and try to understand it. Finally for those military men now serving at the top military positions, as well as those who will rise to those positions later, my advice is to do all you can to improve the civilian-military interface in the highest councils of our government. This is the best way I know to better the chances that our civilian leaders truly understand the risks, costs, and probable outcomes of military actions before they take the nation to war. The United States cannot afford to put itself again at such enormous strategic disadvantage as we found ourselves in in Vietnam. How deep Vietnam has stamped its imprint on American history has yet to be determined. In any event, I am optimistic enough to believe that we Americans can and will learn and profit from our experience.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Closing words, p. 209-210
The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984)

Men, War, Way, History

“I find it increasingly necessary to express my ideas first in engraving or lithography so that they may develop before I start to paint. Every year my form and expression become more sensitive, and my ideas frequently have to pass through three graphic stages before I can start on the canvas... I can hear you say no, that is impossible because the value of the colors demands quite different treatment from black and white, but it is the inner idea that I try to establish firmly through graphic preparation.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

In a letter to de:Gustav Schiefler, 1924, in Annemarie Dube-Heynig, Kirchner: His Graphic Art, Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1961, p. 96 - note 46
1920's

Color, Idea, Painting

“Try how much of the word of God you can understand, and what is more, try how much you can practice. A sincere wish and purpose to do the will of God, will be your best way to know the mind of God.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 554.

God, Way, Understanding, Sincerity

“Of course there are boob and bad reporters who bring in boob and bad items which are printed, and which make so many papers what they are. But there are more intelligent men who try to bring in intelligent items, only to see them changed into imbecile items, with the result that they may easily give up trying, and accustom themselves instead to the spirit of the office….”

George Seldes (1890–1995) American journalist

Can These Things Be!

Men, Intelligence, Change

“I used to go out with Severin a lot to dance clubs but we wouldn't dance. It'd be more like take drugs and try to get to the toilet which would usually take about two hours…we became good friends but we were never really good for each other. Our friendship was based entirely on altered states. Whenever we went out together I would never come home until the next day. Mary hated it.”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

Faith, 1983

Hate, Friendship, Faith, Home

“Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 52
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“A man who wants to find out who he really is should try watching the woman he loves as she dances the tango with a maestro.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ernesto Sábato
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

Love, Dance

“I want play but back hurt. If I no can play good, I no help team. So I wait until pain goes away. I no swing bat good, no run good, no catch ball like old times. I try but pain, she too much. Some days, no pain. Other days, pain all time. Some days pain so much I theenk maybe I quit baseball. But I need money so I play baseball.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted and paraphrased in "Aching Back Puts Clemente On Bench Again" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nUEqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BU4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7330%2C2562781 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Friday, July 26, 1957), p. 20 Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1957</big> Context: "I want play but back hurt. If I no can play good, I no help team. So I wait until pain goes away. I no swing bat good, no run good, no catch ball like old times. I try but pain, she too much. Some days, no pain. Other days, pain all time. Some days pain so much I theenk maybe I quit baseball. But I need money so I play baseball." Clemente doesn't even want to think of an operation on his back. He says he had two brothers and a sister who died following surgery and his family opposes operations.

Money, Pain, Time, Waiting

“Question: Guru Maharaji Ji, what do you mean about the mind being evil? Answer: This mind is jiggling around trying to find out that perfectness. It is inquiring, trying to investigate the perfectness, which is impossible. To the mind, God is a perfect criminal. He has done such a perfect crime by creating this world that mind cannot trace how He did it. That is why the mind always freaks out about God.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

September 1973, Los Angeles, USA, published in Light Reading Vol.1 No.1 Spring 1978 “Question on devotion and other answers”
Students of Prem Rawat clarify that at that time Rawat was making a distinction between the mind, which he described as including the dark or negative thoughts that a person may have; and heart, the place within each person where peace can be found.
1970s

God, World, Question, Evil

“The scientist who considers himself absolutely "objective" and believes that he can free himself from the compulsion of the "merely" subjective should try — only in imagination of course — to kill in succession a lettuce, a fly, a frog, a guineapig, a cat, a dog, and finally a chimpanzee. He will then be aware how increasingly difficult murder becomes as the victim's level of organisation rises. The degree of inhibition against killing each one of these beings is a very precise measure for the considerably different values that we cannot help attributing to lower and higher forms of life. To any man who finds it equally easy to chop up a live dog and a live lettuce I would recommend suicide at his earliest convenience!”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

Life, Dogs, Imagination, Cats

“Her mother’s humpf mixed contempt with frustration. “You just don’t understand anything, do you? We try to bring up our children so that they are protected from the world’s evils, only to find we’ve raised a pack of innocents who seem to be about to stumble into them at every turn just from sheer stupidity!””

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Section 3 (p. 115)
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

Children, Stupidity, World, Understanding

“Conscious of a strength which removes us from either fear or truculence, satisfied with dominions and resources which free us from lust of territory or empire, we see that our highest interest will be promoted by the prosperity and progress of our neighbors. We recognize that what has been accomplished here has largely been due to the capacity of our people for efficient cooperation. We shall continue prosperous at home and helpful abroad, about as we shall maintain and continually adapt to changing conditions the system under which we have come thus far. I mean our Federal system, distributing powers and responsibilities between the States and the National Government. For that is the greatest American contribution to the organization of government over great populations and wide areas. It is the essence of practical administration for a nation placed as ours is. It has become so commonplace to us, and a pattern by so many other peoples, that we do not always realize how great an innovation it was when first formulated, or how great the practical problems which its operation involves. Because of my conviction that some of these problems are at this time in need of deeper consideration, I shall take this occasion to try to turn the public mind in that direction.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

People, Fear, Home, Problem

“Resist the radical element on campus who advocates "mass action" and violent demonstrations. These are usually the tools of Communist agitators. They get students to demonstrate, and this usually provokes a fight. When the police try to restore order, the Communists slip away in an effort to let the students take the blame. When Communist agitators got the students to wreck the Congressional hearings at San Francisco during May of 1960, the judge decided to release them because he felt the students could already see how they had been duped into fronting for professional anti-Americans.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Effort, Fight

“The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 14.

Time

“I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Press conference http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-30-questions-usat_x.htm, May 16, 2002.

People, World, Thinking

“Jesus Christ is trying to follow me, my footsteps, all the way. He stayed in Paradise, because he did not marry. But I gave him marriage. Don’t you want to meet the wives of Buddha, Confucius and Muhammad? They sent letters of gratitude to me from spirit world. They pledge that even if their religion disappears, they will follow me. Can you imagine anyone in this world claiming to have married those past saints? The rings I prepared for their marriage cost a great deal per couple. Did I do that because I am crazy?”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Jae Sa gwa Adam Kwon Shidae Dorae: The Arrival of the Era of the Fourth Adam's Realm http://www.unification.net/news/news19991024.html (1999-10-24)

Marriage, World, Religion, Way

“Someone who says “I am busy” is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 26

Life, Business

“If you don't want to be replaced by a machine, don't try to act like one!”

Arno Allan Penzias (1933) American physicist

Autobiography, Arno Penzias, The Nobel Prize in Physics 1978 (provided in 2004)

“There are different phases of companies. When you’re in the tens of people, the idea itself either attracts people or it doesn’t. People are there because they think the problem you’re trying to solve is just that important.”

Marissa Mayer (1975) American business executive and engineer, former ceo of Yahoo!

The New York Times: "Marissa Mayer Is Still Here" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/business/marissa-mayer-corner-office.html (18 April 2018)

People, Idea, Problem, Thinking

“I see a whole lot. I think, first of all, I think that the world knows that terrorism is not just the United States' problem. And I think that Bush has alienated every friend that we've made over the last 200 years with his arrogance and indifference. And so it makes a lot of sense to me that Kerry, all he has to do is to try to convince people that we've got to deal with the problems in the Middle East. And we just can't have them all down to Crawford Ranch and say everything is going great… It was Rumsfeld who said that we're creating more terrorists than we're killing. And we need a president to restore the honesty, the integrity that the United States of America has abroad.”

Charles B. Rangel (1930) Recipient of the Purple Heart and politician

Rangel (2004) on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Sept 24, 2004
On the differences between George W. Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 Presidential election campaign.

People, World, Problem, Thinking

“Of what she said to me that night—no matter.
The strange thing came next day.
My brain was full of music—something she played me—;
I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it
Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories,
Seeking for something, trying to tell me something,
Urging to restlessness: verging on grief.
I tried to play the tune, from memory,—
But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed
And found no resolution—only hung there,
And left me morbid... Where, then, had I heard it?...”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Music, Memory, Night

“There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.”

Jack Vance book The Languages of Pao

Source: The Languages of Pao (1958), Chapter 13 (p. 133)

Universe, Success

“Pitchers—real pitchers— know that their job isn't so much to keep opposing batsmen from hitting as it is to make them hit it at someone. The trouble with most kid pitchers is that they forget there are eight other men on the team to help them. They just blunder ahead, putting everything they have on every pitch and trying to carry the weight of the whole game on their shoulders. The result is that they tire out and go bad along in the middle of the game, and then the wise old heads have to hurry out and rescue them. I've seen a lot of young fellows come up, and they all had the same trouble. Take Lefty Grove over at Philadelphia, for instance. There isn't a pitcher in the league who has more speed or stuff than Lefty. He can do things with a baseball that make you dizzy. But when he first came into the league he seemed to think that he had to strike out every batter as he came up. The result was he'd go along great for five or six innings, and them blow. And he's just now learning to conserve his strength. In other words, he's learning that a little exercise of the noodle will save a lot of wear and tear on his arm.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter III," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), pp. 32-33; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter III: Pitching the Keynote of Defense; The Pitcher's Job; Why Young Hurlers Fail," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r0sbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J0sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6011%2C3899916 in The Pittsburgh Press (December 23, 1928), p. 52

Men, Exercises, Game, Thinking

“We heard moving accounts from two working miners about just what they have to face as they try to make their way to work. The sheer bravery of those men and thousands like them who kept the mining industry alive is beyond praise. “Scabs” their former workmates call them. Scabs? They are lions!”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105763 Second term as Prime Minister

Men, Way

“Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932)

Death

“I held out pretty long before I really had an affair, but I got lots of attention from my father physically. He was always trying to sleep with me … from the age of about seven on. Only I resisted that. And one of my brothers who claimed that sisters were there for the purpose of teaching … a sister and brother should teach each other the rules and the game of making love; and I wouldn't fall for that either. I just felt, I had no reason to feel. Nobody told me that incest was a bad thing or anything, but I just didn't feel turned on by them.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Love, Age, Making love, Feeling

“…What I can't understand is why come here and try and change our country into the place that you've come from? And all I ask of people is come here, respect our country, respect our laws, our culture, our way of life. Be Australian, join us, enjoy this beautiful country and everything that it has to offer.”

Pauline Hanson (1954) Australian politician

Interview on Enough Rope (September 20, 2004) http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1203646.htm

Life, People, Law, Beauty

“I didn't try to hit him. I just tried to make my pitch and the ball went out of my hand.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Gano, Rick, St. Louis 5, Chi Cubs 4 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=240719116, Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 15, 2007 2004

“Since it's not considered polite, and surely not politically-correct to come out and actually say that greed gets wonderful things done, let me go through a few of the millions of examples of the benefits of people trying to get more for themselves. There's probably widespread agreement that it's a wonderful thing that most of us own cars. Is there anyone who believes that the reason we have cars is because Detroit assembly line workers care about us? It's also wonderful that Texas cattle ranchers make the sacrifices of time and effort caring for steer so that New Yorkers can have beef on their supermarket shelves. It is also wonderful that Idaho potato growers arise early to do back-breaking work in the hot sun to ensure that New Yorkers also have potatoes on their supermarket shelves. Again, is there anyone who believes that ranchers and potato growers, who make these sacrifices, do so because they care about New Yorkers? They might hate New Yorkers. New Yorkers have beef and potatoes because Texas cattle ranchers and Idaho potato growers care about themselves and they want more for themselves. How much steak and potatoes would New Yorkers have if it all depended on human love and kindness? I would feel sorry for New Yorkers. Thinking this way bothers some people because they are more concerned with the motives behind a set of actions rather than the results. This is what Adam Smith, the father of economics, meant in The Wealth of Nations when he said, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interests."”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

Love, Hate, People, Cars

“A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Thin Man

Nick Charles
The Thin Man (1929)

People, Truth

“The business author Stephen Covey explains it well using logging as an analogy – when you are trying to saw a tree down you must take breaks to sharpen your saw. Being a workaholic and failing to do so will leave you blunt and useless.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Business, Tree

“Over a year ago I changed my diet to a vegan diet, really just to experiment to see what it was like. And I felt better, so I continued with it. Now, for many people, that choice is connected to environmental ethics and health issues and all that stuff, but I just wanted to try it to see what it was like. In a visceral way, I felt better, so I've continued with it and I'm likely to continue it for the rest of my life.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

" Al Gore on Medicine's Inconvenient Truths http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/820985#vp_7", interview with Eric Topol, page 7 of 8, in Medscape (7 March 2014)

Life, People, Health, Way

“I think there is a degree of primitivism in what I do... You have to see without illusions. Without trying to protect yourself.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

Thinking

“O Love, divine Love, why do You lay siege to me?
In a frenzy of love for me, You find no rest.
From five sides You move against me:
Hearing, sight, taste, touch, and scent.
To come out is to be caught; I cannot hide from You.
If I come out through sight I see Love
Painted in every form and color,
Inviting me to come to You, to dwell in You.
If I leave through the door of hearing,
What I hear points only to You, Lord;
I cannot escape Love through this gage.
If I come out through taste, every flavor proclaims:
"Love, divine Love, hungering Love!
You have caught me on Your hook, for you want to reign in me."
If I leave through the door of scent
I sense You in all creation; You have caught me
And wounded me through that fragrance.
If I come out through the sense of touch
I find Your lineaments in every creature;
To try to flee from You is madness.”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

The Lauds

Love, Hunger, Color, Sense

“This was the angerless philosophy of Owen, which inspired him with a forbearance that never failed him, and gave him that regnant manner which charmed all who met him. We shall see what his doctrine of environment has done for society, if we notice what it began to do in his day, and what it has done since.
Men perished by battle, by tempest, by pestilence, Faith might comfort, but it did not save them. In every town, nests of pestilence co-existed with the churches, who were concerned alone with worship. Disease was unchecked by devotion. Then Owen asked, "Might not safety come by improved material condition?" As the prayer of hope brought no reply, as the scream of agony, if heard, was unanswered, as the priest, with the holiest intent, brought no deliverance, it seemed prudent to try the philosopher and the physician.
Then Corn Laws were repealed, because prayers fed nobody. Then parks were multiplied because fresh air was found to be a condition of health. Alleys and courts, were begun to be abolished-since deadly diseases were bred there. Streets were widened, that towns might be ventilated. Hours of labour were shortened, since exhaustion means liability to epidemic contagion. Recreation was encouraged, as change and rest mean life and strength. Temperance — thought of as self-denial — was found to be a necessity, as excess of any kind in diet, or labour, or pleasure means premature death. Those who took dwellings began to look, not only to drainage and ventilation, but to the ways of their near neighbours, as the most pious family may poison the air you breathe unless they have sanitary habits.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

Memorial dedication (1902)

Life, Death, Men, Health

“As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures … our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999)

People, Fear, School, Family

“They just don’t trust people. They don’t trust individuals, they don’t trust any change that should serve and benefit people, and they try to stop it.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Digital Activism in China, 2010

People, Change

“Some people didn't like the novel, it is in some ways extremely bleak. But if you are dealing with the kind of subjects I am — trying to demystify the delusions we have about ourselves, to get a more accurate fix on human nature — then people are unsettled. And the easiest way to deal with that is to say it's weird or it's cold.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

The benign catastrophist (2003)

People, Way, Nature

“So it was better to think of formulations which could explain the creation of matter without violating the law of conservation of matter…For that we used what is called as negative energy, which at that time was considered unrealistic. There was a good example of negative energy, mainly Newtonian gravity. Newtonian gravity is a negative energy system because gravitational potential energy is negative and we i. e, Fred Hoyle and me, worked out a fairly consistent method of describing this whole thing. Today what people call phantom fields, an idea which is catching up with people trying to explain some problems of the big-bang, these phantom fields are what we had proposed way back in the 1960’s.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

People, Law, Way, Idea

“Trying to get rid of the symptoms (terrorists) without paying attention to the root cause (terrorist motives) does not eradicate the disease but may instead exacerbate it.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Disease, Motivation

“The fact is that Christian art failed at a deeper level. It failed not in execution but in conception and vision, and this failure was at bottom failure of Christian theology in which mysticism is rudimentary and peripheral. Christian theology has no concept of transcendence, non-attachment, recollectedness, equality (samatâ), liberation (moksha), the vast (bhûmâ) and the infinite (ananta), compassion (kurunâ), of cosmic action emanating from restfulness at the centre; therefore, it felt no call to try to convey them in its art-forms. A deeper iconography needed the support of a deeper theology and vision. This explains why Christian art has no equivalents of Far Eastern Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as Huxley notices. The Eastern tradition was shaped by Hindu religious thinking and sensibility. Hindu art tried to portray the inner man: the Man behind the man, the Eye behind the eye, the Seeing behind the seeing, man's inner prânika or life-currents, the nodal points in his subtle body where the individual meets the cosmic. It portrayed man's inner physiognomy. …. But they portrayed the external man; there was no portrayal of the inner man, the luminous man, the transcendental man.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Life, Art, Failure, Support

“For once you must try not to shirk the facts:
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.”

Bertolt Brecht The Threepenny Opera

"What Keeps Mankind Alive?" Act 2, sc. 6
The Threepenny Opera (1928)

“Christians in this country should start taking another fresher look at their doctrinal content in trying to assume they know the mandate of God.”

Esala Tuibua

Comments on the government's proposed Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, 2 August 2005

God, Country

“Instead of trying to educate the human race, they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 26

Education, Effort, Personality

“Well, the clandestine aspect is that, clearly, the ability to influence the Congress--that's a clandestine activity, a covert activity. You know to some extent, the idea that the Holocaust Museum here in our country is another great ability to somehow make people feel guilty about being the people who did the most to try to end the Holocaust. I find--I just find the whole debate in the United States unbearably restricted with the inability to factually discuss what goes on between our two countries.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

On Israel's alleged "clandestine activities". http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/249irrsq.asp 2000s

People, Feeling, Idea, Country

“I am grateful for the [financial] assistance I received last year [1955] through the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. It gave me the materials I needed and a certain amount of security and enabled me to make a very good try for my New York show. This did not succeed but Miss Betty Parsons whose gallery I will eventually show in assured me that in one more year she thought I could make it, which is not discouraging... I painted all together one hundred canvasses of which I had a good opinion and sold seven”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

in a year
In a letter to Helene Wurlitzer, late 1956; as quoted by Christina Bryan Rosenberger, in Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin, Univ of California Press, July 2016, p. 88
1950's

Painting

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Originally from Herbert Bayard Swope (1882-1958); often attributed to Cosby, he actually cites this as a sound advice he once read elsewhere, in "Dr. Bill Cosby" in Ebony, Vol. 32, No. 8 (June 1977), p. 136
Misattributed

Failure, Success

“No one can hate petitions worse than I, and no one has less faith in them than I. But for my champion I am willing to try any means that invades no other's right, even though I have little hope in it.”

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

Sex Slavery (1890)

Hate, Faith, Hope

“As far as inspiration lyrically, umm…that's what I try to do, I try to delve into my own psyche, and how it reflects across the world. I have a lot of feelings of, I think like most people, of uh guilt and depression and anxiety and happiness, umm, all extreme emotions. That I think personally all bands from, or are spawned from I should say, love, which is the most important emotion there is. The most important power and feeling there is. You have to have something that you can count on, something that'll make you understand that eventually everything will be okay, and eventually you will fulfill yourself. Umm, but it is a process and an adventure. I think that the adventure is meant to be appreciated and, and adored. I think you have to adore even the worst moments of your life.”

Nathan Leone (1981) American musician

Madina Lake-Webisode 1</li></ul>

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“If you have money in the stock market, if you have… may I just recommend you have some cash handy, that you have your food and everything else ready. I hope to God that none of this stuff happens, but you have people who are anarchist revolutionaries who are intent on collapsing the system, they are trying to break the system.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2010s, 2011

Money, God, People, Food

“A mistake that most people make is to assume that the more followers you can recruit, the better. That's true if you are trying to win an election. A vote is a vote regardless of whether the voter is deeply committed or just barely interested enough to get to the polls. But when you're building a revolutionary movement, the number of people you have is far less important than the quality of your people and the depth of their commitment. Too many lukewarm or otherwise unsuitable people will ruin the movement.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Letters to David Skrbina
The Road to Revolution (2008)

People

“Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.
Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns – oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest – no, the hand was cupping her entire right – Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog[…]”

Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) American author and journalist

Source: I am Charlotte Simmons (2004), p. 368-9, winner of the 12th annual The Literary Review Bad Sex Award

God, Dogs, Way

“I'll break down a lesson
Step by step
Like a booklet for you to sweat
And try to apply
To make yourself fly”

Necro (rapper) (1976) American rapper

Song 12 King Pimp Commandments http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/12-King-Pimp-Commandments-lyrics-Necro/99F7CAB87AFDB14748256BEF000A98DF

Flying

“I’m constantly searching for right roles, trying to find what suits me the best. Once I find my metier, I’ll elaborate on that, polish my act and then move on. Some actors quickly find a genre they’re comfortable with and then they perfect it. Others do diverse things until they find what suits them. I’m doing the latter. I still haven’t found the role that I can do full justice to. I’m discovering myself as an actor.”

Abhishek Bachchan (1976) Indian actor

His "peer review" on acting, Deccan Chronicle (February 7, 2016), "Still haven’t found a role I can do justice to: Abhishek Bachchan" http://www.deccanchronicle.com/entertainment/bollywood/070216/still-haven-t-found-a-role-i-can-do-justice-to-abhishek-bachchan.html

Justice, Search, Perfection

“Then I found my head one day when I wasn’t even trying
And here I have to say, ‘cause there is no use in lying, lying
Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now?
Kick out the devil’s sin, pick up, pick up a good book now.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On The Road To Find Out
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Books, Lying

“I have a philosophy, you do the best you can, and the things you can’t do anything about, don’t give any thought to them. … I feel I have to make a contribution. When I was doing surgery, I made it by operating. Now I try to make it by speaking about preventive medicine.”

Ellsworth Wareham (1914–2018)

Interview with CNN's chief medicine reporter Sanjay Gupta (April 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGQTpxjbwaM.

Feeling

“I was attacked for fighting a rearguard action in defence of “middle-class interests.”…Well, if “middle class values” include the encouragement of variety and individual choice, the provision of fair incentives and rewards for skill and hard work, the maintenance of effective barriers against the excessive power of the State and a belief in the wide distribution of individual private property, then they are certainly what I am trying to defend. This is not a fight for “privilege”; it is a fight for freedom—freedom for every citizen.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Article for Daily Telegraph ("My Kind of Tory Party") (30 January 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102600 Shadow Secretary for Environment

Freedom, Fight

“It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Question

“There is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box—Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others. I have been in Hell at last. Desar was right; it is Urras; Hell is Urras.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 11 (pp. 346-347)

People, Fear, Beauty, Way

“I was never so much "interested in Islam", so much as I was interested in trying to find out about God; I wanted to discover my purpose in life and a way to better the world I share with others.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

Beating the drums of hope and faith (2004)

Life, God, World, Way

“Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant—but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"Bulverism" (1941)

Fools, Error, Thinking, Chance

“How ‘real’ it is one feels when trying to form other groups…Most people will never get this other grouping as clear, stable, and optically real as the former one.”

Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) German-American psychologist and phenomenologist

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 143; About group formation

People, Feeling

“This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatreds, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous Island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World—and the New—can join hands to rebuild the temples of man's freedom and man's honour, upon foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (11 September 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 779
The Second World War (1939–1945)

World, Soul, Freedom, Light

“Oh, I have a special way of writing the lyrics when it is dictated to me. No matter what the language of the song, even if it is Bengali, I write it in Hindi. I have certain notations and markings to indicate the way it should be pronounced. I feel the Devanagari script is the closest to the phonetics of the language. English alphabets are not very good for that purpose. Moreover, I listen carefully and try to grasp as much as possible when the lyrics are read to me.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Getting it right (Singing) http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/queen-of-the-charts/article390455.ece

Way, Feeling, Reading

“People are giving up tremendous careers in order to be subject to you folks and subject to a lot of other folks. But they're giving up a lot. I mean some are giving up tremendous businesses in order to sit for four or maybe eight or whatever the period of time is. But I think we're going to see some tremendous talent, tremendous talent coming in. We have many people for every job. I mean no matter what the job is, we have many incredible people. I think, Reince, you can sort of just confirm that. The quality of the people is very good. … We're trying very hard to get the best people. Not necessarily people that will be the most politically correct people, because that hasn't been working. So we have really experts in the field. Some are known and some are not known, but they're known within their field as being the best. That's very important to me.”

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

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

People, Business, Thinking, Time

“As a young man, Valmiki searched through the world seeking open friendship and happiness and hope and finding none of these he went alone into the empty forest where no man lived, to as spot where the Tamasa River flows into Ganga. There he sat for years without moving, so still that white ants built an anthill over him. There Valmiki sat inside that anthill for thousands of years with only his eyes showing out, trying to find the True, his hands folded and his mind lost in contemplation.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 5.
Ramayana

Friendship, Happiness, World, Hope

“Are you aware of your inner signals? Do you trust them? Do you have the focus of control over your life in your own hands? Take this from me, the more decisions you can make avoiding external pressures, which will constantly try to manipulate and immobilise you, the better your life will be, the better your society will become. The entire nation will benifit from having strong, inner-directed people as their leaders.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 175.

Life, People, Decision, Strong

“One of the key topics, for me, is a study of the individual in relation to crowds and to power. A film essay on crowd psychology would avoid commentary (it has become the madness of secondary discourse in many documentaries) and rely wholly on sound and image. Ideally, it would try to provide us with new concepts on the nature of society, on violence, and on the political bestiality of our times that is linked to the way the media has become a plague of words and images stripped of substance. It is a plague infecting our lives and, as a consequence, the history of nations with all that is sensational, random, and confused.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On key topics in the documentary genre, Sundance Channel Interview (July 2004)

Way, History, Nature, Study

“Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

Beauty, Thinking

““Continuous attention must be directed to the behaviour of others and ourselves, trying to pinpoint the creative aspect, the contribution towards the good, the opening towards a greater value, the courage of having decided against the majority. It will seem to us that the moral contribution of the ones who have made themselves the instruments of prejudice and privileges is small, and instead it is great the contribution of those who try to awaken the conscience of everyone, even with their own personal sacrifice.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Courage, Personality

“I am not the type of person who thinks in terms of "if only" or "could have, would have, should have". It is what it is and everything happens for a reason. When a person thinks "if only I would have known such and such" it shows a certain amount of fear or lack of trust that everything is as it should be. I try to always do my best and if I look back and think I didn't do my best, then that is the only thing I acknowledge and then try to change. One of my favorite expressions is, "Everything is okay in the end and if it's not okay, it's not the end."”

Charlene Wong (1966) Canadian figure skater

" Charlene Wong: Everything is okay in the end and if it's not okay, it's not the end", in Lifeskate.com (15 December 2008) http://www.lifeskate.com/skate/2008/12/charlene-wong-everything-is-okay-in-the-end-and-if-its-not-okay-its-not-the-end.html

Fear, Thinking, Change, Personality

“In a really great way, you simultaneously try to take up as little and as much space as possible.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

On working in the ensemble group The Polyphonic Spree.
QRO Magazine interview (2007)

Way

“O what devouring kisses (multiplied)
What pretty whimperings, did the grove repeat!
What flattering force! What anger which did chide
Itself, and laughed when it began to threat!
What more than this the blushing Morning spied,
And Venus (adding hers to the Noon's heat)
Is better tried, than guessed, I must confess:
But those who cannot try it, let them guess.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Stanza 83 (tr. Richard Fanshawe)-->
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto IX

Kiss, Anger

“"I’m not a huge practicing Christian myself, but it just staggers me that people who claim to be can stand up and spout – like your president George Bush – can stand up and spout this bullshit about God supporting one side over another in war, which is why I wrote the lyrics of the song "What God Wants": “God wants crusade/God wants Jihad.” Well it may well be that God doesn’t want either of those things. They’re manifestations of the insecurities of the Muslim and Christian communities. I hate when someone uses religion to bolster war in the world: it's extremely disgusting and offensive for me, and for all christians, because that was not what Christ was trying to teach."”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

"Roger Waters talks about What God Wants", a 1993 interview
Philosophy

God, Hate, War, People

“Well, what kind of thing does make you feel calm and peaceful?"
"Killing demons. A good clean kill is very relaxing. The messy ones are more annoying, because you have to clean up afterward--"
"No. No killing. We're trying to make you feel peaceful. Blood, killing, war, those are all non-peaceful things. Isn't there anything else you like?"
"Weapons. I like weapons.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

"I'm starting to think we have a problematic issue of personal philosophy here."
Jordan Kyle and Jace Herondale, pg. 27-29
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

War, Peace, Feeling, Thinking

“I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

World

“I might be trying to change the world, but I also better be funny while I'm doing it. I've never lost sight of that.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, D-01, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, brings humor to normally serious field, The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, New York, March 9, 2005, Bill Buell]

World, Change

“When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"Why Nerds are Unpopular," February 2003

Hostility, People, Thinking, Water

“Everybody's got a secret Sonny,
Something that they just can't face.
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it;
They carry it with them every step that they take.
Till some day they just cut it loose.
Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down
Where no one asks any questions,
Or looks too long in your face
In the darkness on the edge of town.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Darkness on the Edge of Town"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Secret, Question

“An artist who sees that the imitation of natural appearances, however artistic, is not for him – the kind of creative artist who wants to, and has to express his own inner world – sees with envy how naturally and easily such goals can be attained in music, the least material of the arts today. Understandably, he may turn toward it and try to find the same means in his own art. Hence the current search for rhythm in painting, for mathematical abstract construction.... the way colors are set in motion, etc.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

1910 - 1915
Source: On the Spiritual in Art, 1911; as quoted in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 15

World, Art, Music, Color

“Sometimes people decide to write reports even though they haven't been to Guantanamo. And so I would just suggest that people look at some of the work that's been done by people who have been there. But that's not to say that we will not be very glad at the day that conditions permit the closure of Guantanamo and the trying of its inhabitants or for their release.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

Remarks With British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw At Blackburn Town Hall http://web.archive.org/web/20060405071024/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/63980.htm, April 1, 2006.

People

“The modern reading of ancient literature involves a mode of reception that is not merely scholarly or antiquarian. Instead, aesthetic experience allows for a direct relationship between reader and work, despite the historical distance. Today’s consumer cannot participate in the ancient economy by trying to use an Athenian coin as legal tender; but today’s reader can participate in the ancient literary imagination though an authentic engagement with the Homeric text (no matter how much contemporary circumstances necessarily also enter into that encounter with the ancient text). Thus the historicist imperative of periodization evidently stands at odds with the potential for immediacy associated with literary reception and aesthetic experience.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 14.

Imagination, Literature, Reading

“In Texas, we have the death penalty and we use it! That's right. You come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back! That's our policy. They're trying to pass a bill right now through the Texas legislature that will speed up the process of execution in heinous crimes where there's more than 3 credible eyewitnesses. That means that if three or more people saw you do what you did, you don't sit on Death Row for 15 years, Jack! You go straight to the front of the line. Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. My state's putting in the express lane!”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Death, People, Penalty, Speed

“Trying to make a living from poetry is like putting chains on butterfly wings.”

A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet

Paris Review interview (1996)

“I taught at a school in Cincinnati with a 0% graduation rate and that was also interesting so I updated from thinking school was beneficial for other people but not beneficial to me, to thinking school was beneficial for maybe some people around the middle – at least some of the better schools – but not beneficial for the vast majority of people, to then actually reading the literature on education and on intelligence and academic accomplishment and symbolic manipulation and concluding "no, school isn't good for anyone". There might be a few schools that are good for people, like there's Blair and there's Stuyvesant and these schools may actually teach people, but school can better be seen as a vaccination program against knowledge than a process for instilling knowledge in people, and of course when a vaccination program messes up, occasionally people get sick and die of the mumps or smallpox or whatever. And when school messes up occasionally people get sick and educated and they lose biological fitness. And in either case the people in charge revise the program and try to make sure that doesn't happen again, but in the case of school they also use that as part of their positive branding and you know maintain a not-very-plausible story about it being intended to cause that effect while also working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.”

Michael Vassar (1979) President of the Singularity Institute

In an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cSG0p-uflA with Adam Ford, December 2012

People, Education, School, Intelligence

“The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of crumminess. When the grave lies open before us, let’s not try to be witty, but record the worst of human viciousness we’ve seen without changing one word. When that’s done, we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That’s work enough for a lifetime.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 3

Life, People, Way, Change

“I will try to develop an entirely new style and I am sure I will succeed.”

Otto Mueller (1874–1930) German painter and printmaker of the expressionist movement

“Why should I be more ‘cautious, careful,’ as you say? I stay in the big leagues as long as I do because I play only one way. I know I take too many, maybe. I know I should not sometimes dive for the ball—or hit the wall trying to catch it— as much as I do. But you catch the ball, you help your team. You don’t catch it, you don’t help your team. I believe playing, how you say, ‘all out’ has prolonged my career. If a ballplayer starts loafing, he tends to lose that little push that is so necessary, so important. You get lazy, won’t take even the smallest chance; kind of lose interest. Your rhythm, I guess it is, gets all messed up. Fly balls start falling on you, when they should not. And you find yourself not getting around on the ball like you should. Once you lose this ‘little push,’ then it is awfully hard to get back in the groove… get yourself going again. Your ambition – desire – suffers. And you become the kind of ballplayer you don’t want to be.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "‘Never Let Up,’ Says Clemente" by Hal Hayes, in The Atlanta Constitution (Tuesday, May 5, 1970), p. 2-C
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1970</big>

Way, Suffering, Chance, Help

“Well alright, anyone who has dreams of world empire, look what it did to Britain (chuckles heartily). There's a reason that whole country is one big Smith song. That's actually one exciting thing about studying history, there did come a point towards the end of the 19th century where the British were just like, "this ain't worth it mate". There's a reason why in 1945 they gave us the keys to the world. They were like, "here, it's yours, take it, go, we're fine, no? India, go. Africa, go." Because they'd had enough. Because it's really hard, we can't even run ourselves. We literally have people storming our capital with signs saying, "government, keep your hands off my social security". If we can't handle that, do we really want to try and run, Africa? I think what we need is not so much world empire, I think we need closer cooperation, closer alliances.”

Max Brooks (1972) American author

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

People, World, Dreams, History

“Now that was very impressive. But before you try to impress the ladies in the balcony, make sure the horns come in.”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

Quoted from Freedland, M. André Previn. Century, 1991. p97
To a student conductor.

“I should want to go home, like Fenella. I should be so tired of the shambles here, the obscurantism, the colour-prejudice, the laziness and ignorance, as to desire nothing better than a headship in a cold stone country school in England. But I love this country. I feel protective towards it. Sometimes just before dawn breaks, I feel that somehow I enclose it, contain it. I feel that it needs me. This is absurd, because snakes and scorpions are ready to bite me, a drunken Tamil is prepared to knife me, the Chinese in the town would like to spit at me, some day a Malay boy will run amok and try to tear me apart. But it doesn’t matter. I want to live here; I want to be wanted. Despite the sweat, despite the fever, the prickly heat, the mosquitoes, the terrorists, the fools at the bar of the club, despite Fenella.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Love, School, Fools, Feeling

“p>The inherent contradictions and binds men find themselves in in trying to become less macho in their relationship with a woman were poignantly expressed in a letter written by a young man to a New York newspaper in response to an article that addressed itself to a question posed by a woman writer—whether women would be able to think of a non-macho man as sexy. The letter writer wrote:I am by nature a gentle and non-aggressive 27-year-old man who often finds women turned off sexually by my tenderness and non-macho view of the world. I have come to realize that for all their talk, a lot of women still want the hairy, sexy, war-mongering, aggressive machoman of their dreams. So after several fruitless years as a gentle poet-man, I now turn myself into a heavy machismo when I go out with a woman. It works. I open the doors, I order the food and drinks, I decide which movie or play we will see. I keep my shirt unbuttoned down past my nipples and wear a gold chain around my neck with a carved elephant tusk medallion, and if the relationship is not working out, I make the first move and tell my companion that I'm sorry but we're through.The sad thing about all this is that it works.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

After all those years of being naturally sensitive and gentle, and now I've got to turn myself inside out just to appear sexy. It's fun and it's nice, but I do wish I could just be myself again.</blockquote>
Who Is the Victim? Who Is the Oppressor?, pp. 165–166
The New Male (1979)

Women, Men, War, World