Quotes about try
page 40

“Emily stared into the middle distance, trying to ignore the fact that the men were looking at her like a cupcake on a plate.”

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 23, “The Skycladdische and the Sangrimancer” (p. 325)

Men

“I got God on my side.
I'm just trying to survive.
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love?
Fear's a powerful thing;
It can turn your heart black you can trust.
It'll take your God filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Devils & Dust"
Song lyrics, Devils & Dust (2005)

Love, God, Fear, Soul

“Whether you accept Rādhā and Krishna, or not, please do accept their attraction for each other. Try to create that same yearning in your heart for God. Yearning is all you need in order to realize Him.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 140

God, Heart

“Instead of looking at fragments, try to see the whole picture.”

Stephen R. Covey book First Things First

First Things First (1994), Disputed

“A boy of ten or eleven has a few great sexual experiences—he thinks they’re great—but then he has the bad luck to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other explanations that some different behavior is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. … The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had the sexual experience. That objective factor is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. … The sensible course would be to accept it as a valuable part of further growth. But if this were done, they fear that the approved little hero would be a rotten apple to his peers, who now would suddenly all become precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and prone to delinquency. The sexual plight of these children is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. … The question here is not whether the sexuality should be discouraged or encouraged. That is an important issue, but far more important is that it is hard to grow up when existing facts are treated as though they do not exist. For then there is no dialog, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 38-39.

Bad luck, Children, Fear, Behavior

“This is not a temperamentissue. The Clinton campaign needs to try to make it into a temperament issue for one reason because they know that over 70 percent of the American people don't believe a thing she says. And so, therefore, her putting up policies that she's going to do have no credibility.”

Paul Manafort (1949) American political consultant

Interview on NBC News' Meet The Press (July 31, 2016)

People

“I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work, I study the stars.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"After the Storm"
"A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), "The Schooner Flight" (1980)

Happiness, Star, Study, Forgetting

“Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty ("étant vide par essence", Fr.), he is trying to fill (or take up, - "remplir", Fr.) his life; the latter reason play a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches (or wealth), is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness, a need to let one's hair down (or to live it up), to put oneself on a false scent or trail.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

de se donner le change", Fr.
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 56.

Love, Life, Thinking, Change

“One of the reasons why I don't get on with most fantasy writing - enchanted sword fantasy writing - is because I think it's emotionally untrue. People behave in very simple ways, unparadoxical ways. What I'm trying to do is bring into fantasy - as I hope I've been able to bring to horror - a certain kind of emotional realism. People have mentioned sex as being a major part of my fiction. An awful lot of horror fiction simply never contained that kind of material. Which seems to me to be extraordinary because most horror fiction is about the body in some way or other, and therefore it should be about sensuality and eroticism every bit as much as it's about corruption.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Writer's Digest, March 1991

People, Hope, Sex, Way

“The moral systems of religion, I think, are superimportant. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Response when he was asked whether he believed in God, at his interview with the Rolling Stone Magazine http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140313#ixzz367A061i0. March 27, 2014. The Rolling Stone Interview (2014)

World, Religion, Way, Thinking

“Well, [Kepler] reminded me of myself – the little man running desperately in circles, trying to find an explanation for the world, for his place in it, to find a plausible system, to account for reality – and never finding it. Finding lots of rules and laws which are very important, but never actually finding his own way into what it is to be in the world – very much an existentialist before his time, I think.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

World, Law, Way, Thinking

“Friendships and relationships go beyond politics/elections. Heart's mom is very close to Senator Miriam (Defensor) and, while I respect her position now, it will not stop nor deter Heart and I from campaigning and try to convince her, until election day to go for Senator Grace (Poe).”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (7:09 p.m. 2015 October 26).
2015, Twitter Feed

Friendship, Moms, Heart

“Eve,” I said, “please stop for a minute. I think I finally get it. As you read to me aloud, the words become alive for me, and I can see pictures in my head. But when I try to read, all those little letters just confuse me. Because it’s the white of the page between the words that truly grab me. Do I make any sense? Reading, I do believe, is a very unnatural thing. But to listen to a story, like sitting around a campfire, is very natural.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Nature, Thinking, Sense, Reading

“You can be politically correct if you want, but are you trying to say we don't have a problem? … Most Muslims, like most everything, I mean, these are fabulous people… But we certainly do have a problem, I mean, you have a problem throughout the world. … It wasn't people from Sweden that blew up the World Trade Center.”

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

On CNN's "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper — as quoted in * 2015-09-20
Trump: 'We certainly do have a problem' with some Muslims
Timothy Cama
The Hill
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/254307-trump-we-certainly-do-have-a-problem-with-some-muslims
2010s, 2015

People, World, Problem

“Communism is one of the few grave diseases we didn't try on animals first.”

Coluche (1944–1986) French comedian and actor

Le communisme, c'est une des seules maladies graves qu'on n'a pas expérimenté d'abord sur des animaux.
[Coluche, PC-CGT, Coluche : l'intégrale, 6, Sony Music, 1996]

Disease, Communication, Animals

“Your insolence and ignorance of the rights conceded to workers universally in the modern world were incredible, and as great as your inhumanity. If you had between you collectively a portion of human soul as large as a threepenny bit, you would have sat night and day with the representatives of labour, trying this or that solution of the trouble, mindful of the women and children, who at least were innocent of wrong against you. But no! You reminded labour you could always have your three square meals a day while it went hungry.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

Open letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913)

Women, Children, World, Soul

“The world as a whole is full of problems and difficulties and it is most important that every country which loves its Freedom and wants to maintain its Independence and sovereignty should work for peace and try to see that there is disarmament in the world which alone will lead to real peace.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

Love, World, Peace, Problem

“It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing — atoms with curiosity — that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture II: "The Uncertainty of Values"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

Life, God, History, Understanding

“My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 32, “Juniper: Visitors” (p. 365)

Religion

“Supposing Catherine Lim was writing about me and not the prime minister…She would not dare, right? Because my posture, my response has been such that nobody doubts that if you take me on, I will put on knuckle-dusters and catch you in a cul de sac…Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no other way you can govern a Chinese society.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Man and His Ideas, 1997 http://books.google.com/books?id=ljOkLtGgIQYC&dq=Supposing+Catherine+Lim+was+writing+about+me+and+not+the+prime+minister..&source=gbs_navlinks_s 1990s

Way, Thinking, Hurt

“Well, my mother and I were discussing how my father left when I was nine months old, and then she remarried and divorced again. I feel like I had blocked out that part of my childhood. I went back with her trying to piece it all back together. I was looking at it through 46 year-old eyes and thinking it was basically ten years of bullshit.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Iris Covet Book https://iriscovetbook.com/exclusive-erika-jayne/ (2018)

Feeling, Thinking, Parting, Childhood

“If you fell head first into a pigsty, you'd try to convince everybody you did it on purpose.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Egwene al'Vere to Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 October 1993)

“Every note leaves in each of us a memory, but it is the melody as a whole that tells a story, the story of someone wanting to get closer to another person and who keeps on trying, despite repeated rejections.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Memory, Personality

“An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times—a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream—an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly—an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth—these do live with their 'natural environment,' but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: 'Should one do everything one can? Of course not.' Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.”

Ayn Rand book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 88

Family, Food, Beauty, Cars

“I don’t know if I've got close enough [in two recent paintings he made] to what I was really trying to achieve. But at least I've tried, I've made the attempt. I've done what I could. I've gone as far as my powers permitted.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 2 November 1970; p. 81
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

Painting

“It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Court years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas‎ (1980), p. 3
Other speeches and writings

People

“The clean clear colours [of a Shanty farm] were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try — all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show [c. 1923], 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint…. that was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Men, Thinking, Tree, Painting

“When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult and unhappy business. And so most of the time you're rather unhappy, actually, with this confusion. You can't penetrate this thing. Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it, the idea? And I get this feeling all the time that I'm an ape trying to put two sticks together, so I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Video interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lytxafTXg6c dated 1963

Stupidity, Feeling, Idea, Understanding

“Outside the academic establishment, the “far-reaching change in all our habits of thought” is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of “Worship together this week,” “Why not try God,” Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 13-14

Life, God, Way, Behavior

“Managers try to make the workplace safer and less destructive (= more productive) of a precious capital: labour. Animal exploitation duplicates this process. It tends to experiment less on animals in order to get more from them, painfully if it must, painlessly if it can”

Gilles Dauvé (1947) French writer

"Letter on Animal Liberation" (1999)

Animals

“I would like to congratulate everybody with the commencement of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercises. This exercise is running simultaneously in Armenia and Germany. We have about 130 participants from 6 countries, this being evidence of importance and actuality of the event. It is notable that the cooperation between the Ministry of Defence of Armenia and the US European Command is developing and implementing a number of projects, and the vivid evidence of this cooperation is this military exercise. This is not the first military exercise in Armenia. Since 2003, we have hosted a number of military exercises organized with the NATO/PfP and the US European Command. It is important that the running of military exercises in Armenia is growing into a good tradition. Especially since, we already have an arrangement of hosting "Cooperative Longbow/Lancer" military exercises in Armenia for 2008. I would also like to mention with appreciation that the planning conference and working meetings before the military exercise would be held in a constructive atmosphere. We have effectively managed to run all preparation activities with joint efforts of the US European Command, the MOD of Armenia and other partners. The communication field is that chain which has fundamental importance for realizing multinational activities. The effectiveness and successes of our cooperation is related to that. This military exercise not only supports the testing of capabilities of participating units and experts, but also an opportunity for developing effective mechanisms for ensuring an interoperability and carrying out the tasks jointly. It is not accidental that Armenia has always expressed its readiness to host such kinds of events, and all participants have been trying to create appropriate conditions for their work. Taking this opportunity, one more time, I would like to thank all participants for their presence here and the US European command for their assistance in organizational matters. I am sure that due to our joint activities, the military exercise would be on a high professional and organizational level. I also hope that while you are in Armenia, you have a chance to make yourselves familiar with our history, culture and will have wonderful impressions. I am sure that on the 10th of May, after the completion of the military exercise, we will ascertain one more time that another multinational military exercise was held with success and fulfilled its tasks. I would like to wish all participants fruitful work and further success. I allow the commencement of the opening of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercise.”

Mikael Harutyunyan (1946) Armenian general

Quoted in 2007 article. [April 27, 2007]

Hope, Exercises, History, Communication

“Running all over the sea trying to get behind the weather.”

Joseph Conrad book Typhoon

Typhoon (1902), Ch. 2

Weather, Sea

“I saw Amadeus when I was nine years old and fell in love with Mozart. The part of Mozart's Requiem called "Lacrymosa" is my favorite piece of music ever. I always wished we could cover it, but with programming and guitars and make it cool. It's our moment to try all the things I wanted to and couldn't, so I started messing with it in Protools. Terry wrote some riffs and turned it into this awesome metal epic.”

Amy Lee (1981) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Explaining her song "Lacrymosa", in "Evanescence: Amy Lee Explains the New Songs" at VH1 News (18 September 2006)

Love, Music, Parting

“Not that there weren't real communists in the labor unions, and real spies in Washington, but these had nothing to do with the show that was being put on for us, which seemed entirely designed to Make Us Take This Thing Seriously. From abroad, where I was for much of the time, it looked as if the United States were trying to act like a superpower by holding its very own show trials.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Program Notes," p. xiv
Essays in Disguise (1990)

Time

“I’m not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 12, p. 177

Fools

“It is naïve to think that a [computer] model can predict future events on the Earth. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly.”

Ian Plimer book Heaven and Earth

Heaven and Earth (2009)

Nature, Thinking, Future

“The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

People, Bird

“The Christian message is not an exhortation — "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving gospel in that.”

Halford E. Luccock (1885–1960) American Methodist minister

Marching Off the Map : And Other Sermons (1952), p. 110

“It is not lawful for you to make a compromise with God: to try to fulfill part of your duties and to omit others at your own pleasure.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 22.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

God, Pleasure, Law, Parting

“Funny how that term caught on, isn't it? I tell everyone, I hated it. Somebody said 'drain the swamp' and I said, 'Oh, that is so hokey. That is so terrible.' I said, all right, I'll try it. So like a month ago I said 'drain the swamp' and the place went crazy. And I said 'Whoa, what's this?' Then I said it again. And then I start saying it like I meant it, right? And then I started to love it, and the place loved it. Drain the swamp. It's true. It's true. Drain the swamp.”

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

During a rally in Des Moines, Iowa http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/21/trump-adviser-says-he-is-ditching-drain-the-swamp.html (December 2016) 2010s, 2016, December

Love, Hate

“Although it is always somewhat dangerous to look for the cause of a complex sociological phenomenon in a single event, nonetheless, I believe that a cause can be made for the proposition that the present widespread interest in the quantum theory can be traced to a single paper with the nontransparent title “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,” which was written in 1964 by the then thirty-four-year-old Irish physicist John Bell. It was published in the obscure journal Physics, which expired after a few issues. Bell’s paper was, as it happens, published in its first issue. Bell, who has worked since 1960 at CERN, the gigantic elementary-particle physics laboratory near Geneva, has been known to claim that his paper involves only the use of “high school mathematics”; however, its six pages are dense with an extremely abstract set of arguments, which even professionals in the field must work hard at to understand. In fact, for several years after its publication, few if any professional physicists bothered to try.”

Jeremy Bernstein (1929) American physicist

Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer

School, Mathematics, Understanding

“I set my hand to the art of writing early on. Publishing was easy for me, and I at once found favor and understanding. But it was a long time before I realized and convinced myself that this was anything but mere chance.
Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one's mother's womb.
Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.”

Italo Calvino book The Path to the Nest of Spiders

The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947), Preface
English translation: Archibald Colquhoun (1957), HarperCollins.

Life, Books, World, Art

“Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
And I'm going to drink till I get my fill.
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it,
But I probably will.
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of,
Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Glory Days"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Hope, Drink, Thinking, Time

“Well, for me, I was able to make that statement of faith early on when my career began, so there weren’t really a lot of surprises. People around me knew where my husband Ray and I stood as far as my faith went. When you establish that early on in your career it makes it so much easier than trying to re-invent it or having to restate your faith each new opportunity that comes ahead.”

Jodi Benson (1961) American voice actress, actress and singer

Interview with a Mermaid http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/peanutsandpopcorn/2013/09/interview-with-a-mermaid.html (2014)

People, Faith

“I am trying to marshal all the forces I can to prevent this coming war, and to strengthen Britain.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Guy Fleetwood Wilson (13 November 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 800
The 1930s

War

“Theoretical psychology in its present state must try to develop a system of concepts which shows all the characteristics of a Gestalt, in which any part depends upon every other part. As we do not yet have the knowledge of facts which really suffices to determine this system of concepts and as, on the other hand, this knowledge of "facts" cannot be acquired without developing this system of concepts, there seems to be only one way open: to proceed slowly by tentative steps, to make decisions rather reluctantly, to keep in view always the whole field of psychology, and to stay in closest contact with the actual work of psychological research.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. viii.

Way, Knowledge, Decision, Parting

“Somebody is trying to kill all the kernel developers.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

2010s, 2012

“Some of the environmental lobbyists of the western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they would be crying out for tractors, and fertilizer, and irrigation canals, and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

Norman Borlaug (1914–2009) American biologist

Reported by Gregg Easterbrook in a January 1997 interview for The Atlantic Monthly.

Hunger, World, Home, Fashion

“Question: …you believe the Fed shouldn't exist… make the case.
Ron Paul: First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. This station talks about free market capitalism, and you can't have free market capitalism if you have a secret bank creating money and credit out of thin air. They become the central planners, they decide what interest rates should be, what the supply of money should be…
Question: How does the gold standard solves that?
Ron Paul: It maintains a stable currency and a stable value. If the Fed concentrated more on stable money rather than stable prices… They push up new money in stocks and in commodities and in houses, and then they have to come in to rescue the situation. They create the bubbles, then they come in and rescue it, and they do nothing more than try to do price fixing. Capitalism depends, and capital comes from savings, but there's no savings in this country, so this is all artificial. It creates the misdirection and the malinvestment and all the excessive debt, and it always has to have a correction. Since the Fed has been in existence, the dollar has lost about 97% of its value. You're supposed to encourage savings, but if something loses its value, why save dollars? There's no encouragement whatsoever. […] Gold is 6000 years old, and it still maintains its purchasing power. Oil prices really are very stable in terms of Gold. […] Both conservatives and liberals want to enhance big government, and this is a seductive way to tax the middle class.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

CNBC debate with Faiz Shakir, March 20, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k94VWPjUQSM 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, Secret, Way, Question

“In my conversation, I shall talk and act as I please. Still I am always aware, when speaking in public, that there are those present who are disposed to find fault with this people, and to try to raise a prejudice against them; and they will pick up isolated words and sentences, and put them together to suit themselves, and send forth a garbled version to prejudice the world against us. Such a course I never care anything about; for I have frequently said, spoken words are but wind, and when they are spoken are gone; consequently I take liberties in speaking which I do not allow when I commit my sentiments to writing.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 2:179 (February 18, 1855)
Young predicts that people will take his written words and rearrange them to suit themselves.
1850s

People, World

“This noble pledge has endured trying hours in the United Nations history, and it still guides our work today. Yet the ideals of the charter are now facing a challenge as serious as any since the U. N.'s founding, a global movement of violent extremists. By deliberately murdering the innocent to advance their aims, these extremists defy the fundamental principles of international order. They show contempt for all who respect life and value human dignity. They reject the words of the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or any standard of conscience or morality. They imperil the values of justice and human rights that gave birth to the United Nations, values that have fueled an unprecedented expansion of freedom across the world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

Life, World, Justice, History

“Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see... rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

In The Globe and Mail newspaper (January 2007)

Time

“I don't believe that the average fellow has anything like a true line on the value of wrist action in hitting anything—a baseball, a golf ball, a tennis ball or a polo ball. If you watch most of them, you will see they are trying to hit with their bodies, with their shoulders, with their arms—with almost everything except their wrists. I think it comes because most of them are overanxious, all tied up, too tense. They start by gripping too tightly. That kills off the hands and wrists. Their wrists get locked and then they have to swing their shoulders and bodies in. You'd be surprised how far a fellow can hit a ball, using only his wrists. I know I've been caught off guard or out of position on a sharp breaking curve, have had to slap at the ball, using only my wrists and have now and then watched it sail over the fence. The wrist is the mainspring—both wrists in baseball and golf. If you get them to work the rest is fairly easy. If you don't get them to work you are not going to do any good hitting. You can't get any speed in closing a door if the hinges are rusty and won't work. Hack Wilson must have great wrist action, for no short, stocky guy is going to hit that many home runs without a lot of it.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "The Sportlight" by Grantland Rice, in The Baltimore Sun (August 22, 1930), p. 13

Guy, Home, Thinking, Speed

“There can be no question but that Christianity was originally a Jewish promotion, and it is noteworthy that the Christians who try to make their cult respectable in the Third Century claim that they repudiate the Jews. One of the earliest to do this was Tertullian, a Carthaginian shyster, whose Apologeticum, a defense of Christianity, was written at the very beginning of the Third Century. He asserts that Christianity is not a conspiracy of revolutionaries and degenerates, as was commonly believed, and claims that it is an association of loving brothers who have preserved the faith that the Jews forsook – which has been the common story ever since. Our holy men salvage Tertullian by claiming that he was "orthodox" in his early writings, but then, alas! became a Montanist heretic, poor fellow. Tertullian is the author of the famous dictum that he believes the impossible because it is absurd (credo quia absurdum), so he is naturally dear to the heart of the pious. How much Jerome and other saints have tampered with the facts to make Tertullian seem "orthodox" in his early works has been most fully shown by Timothy Barnes in his Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), but even he spends a hundred pages pawing over chronological difficulties that can be reconciled by what seems to me the simple and obvious solution: Tertullian, who was evidently a pettifogging lawyer before he got into the Gospel-business, had sense enough to eliminate from his brief for the Christians facts that would have displeased the pagans whom he was trying to convince that Christians represented no threat to civilized society; he accordingly concealed in his apologetic works the peculiar doctrines of the Christian sect to which he had been originally "converted," but he naturally expounded those doctrines in writings intended, not for the eyes of wicked pagans, but for other brands of Christians, whom he wished to convert to his own sect, which was that of Montanus, a very Holy Prophet (divinely inspired, of course) who was a Phrygian, not a Jew, and who had learned from chats with God that since the Jews had muffed their big opportunity at the time of the Crucifixion, Jesus, when he returned next year or the year after that, was going to set up his New Jerusalem in Phrygia after he had raised hell with the pagans and tormented and butchered them in all of the delightful ways so lovingly described in the Apocalypse, the Hymn of Hate that still soothes the souls of "fundamentalist" Christians today. If, in his Apologeticum and similar works, Tertullian had told the stupid pagans that they were going to be tortured and exterminated in a year or two, they might have doubted that Christians were the innocent little lambs that Tertullian claimed they were.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Love, Men, God, Hate

“Consider the problem of taking showers with Christians. They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you.”

Stanley Hauerwas (1940) American theologian

Source: From "Why Gays (as a Group) are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)" in The Hauerwas Reader https://www.academia.edu/6641759/Introduction_to_The_Hauerwas_Reader_2001_ (2001) eds. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright

God, People, Hope, Business

Jonathan Wolff (philosopher)

Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (1991), p. 106 http://books.google.com/books?id=A8D3CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT106

World, Justice, Feeling, Nature

“Having alternative currencies is great, right, because, historically, government's had a monopoly on currency. … At the end of the day, why should only politicians—either directly or indirectly—control the currency? We can reduce transaction cost, provide an alternative, and—look, I don't know whether it'll be Bitcoin or not—but I think the concept of digital currencies is here to stay, and the fact that a politician would write to try to ban them in their infancy is just the wrong way to go about it. Let the market determine whether there's any value there or not. … If people are saying, "Look, we gotta ban Bitcoin because it's somewhat anonymous and anonymous transactions can occur," or "because it's possible for criminals to use it," all of those arguments can be used to say, "Just ban dollars."”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

… The government doesn't need to "treat" it [Bitcoin] at all. … The government policy should be completely agnostic about what unit of exchange is used.
Jared Polis, interviewed by Kennedy, Matt Welch, and Kmele Foster on The Independents, Fox Business (10 March 2014).

People, Way, Thinking

“If you ever feel any pride or vanity on account of your sway and rule over your subjects then think of the supreme sway and rule of the Lord over the Universe, the extent of His creations, the supremacy of His Might and Glory, His Power to do things which you cannot even dream of doing and His control over you which is more dominating than that which you can ever achieve over anything around you. Such thoughts will cure your mental weakness, will keep you away from vanity and rebellion (against Allah), will reduce your arrogance and haughtiness and will take you back to the sanity which you had foolishly deserted… Try carefully to realize that a ruler can create goodwill in the minds of his subjects and can make them faithful and sincere to him only when he is kind and considerate to them, when he reduces their troubles, when he does not oppress them and when he never asks for things which are beyond their power. These are the principles which you should keep in mind and act upon.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 53: An order to Malik Al-Ashtar

Faith, Dreams, Feeling, Thinking

“We have overwhelming evidence that available information plus analysis does not lead to knowledge. The management science team can properly analyse a situation and present recommendations to the manager, but no change occurs. The situation is so familiar to those of us who try to practice management science that I hardly need to describe the cases.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

C. West Churchman, "Managerial acceptance of scientific recommendations" in California Management Review, Vol 7 (1964), p. 33; cited in Management Systems (1971), by Peter P. Schoderbek, p. 199
1960s - 1970s

Knowledge, Science, Change

“He fought despairingly to go deeper into the blackness of a sleep, any sleep, even the sleep of death or some form of non-existence, but even with the loss of consciousness he dreamt he was awake, lying on the bed trying desperately to sleep. If he could find some way to prove that time had passed, no matter how short that time, he could tell himself that he had slept and perhaps then, just perhaps, he would feel rested.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Room

The Room (1971)

Death, Way, Feeling, Lying

“An award means a lot to me. It brings happiness along with a kind of fear. It brings fear because the award is the responsibility which audiences have put on us. So a singer winning an award should always try to give best of him to the audiences.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Ghoshal's thoughts about winning awards http://www.timesofindia.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/I-am-not-a-competitive-person-Shreya-Ghoshal/articleshow/18400625.cms

Happiness, Fear

“God is sitting here, looking into my very soul to see if I think right thoughts. Yet I am not afraid, for I try to be right and good; and He knows every one of my struggles.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=EsovAQAAMAAJ&q=%22God+is+sitting+here+looking+into+my+very+soul+to+see+if+I+think+right+thoughts+Yet+I+am+not+afraid+for+I+try+to+be+right+and%22&pg=PA39#v=onepage to Abiah Root http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/abiah_root (29 January 1850)

God, Soul, Thinking

“At least some Americans are still having children. Unfortunately, many of those children spend their formative years being taught how to surrender. The emasculation of American boys is one step short of suicide. […] Schoolyards used to be filled with kids at recess playing games like "kill the guy with the ball." Nobody died. Boys played with G. I. Joes and girls played with dolls. Kids played freeze tag without a single incident of sexual harassment. […] Not too many years ago, cartoons were filled with violence. Bugs Bunny tied a gun barrel in a knot and Elmer Fudd's gun went kaboom, covering his own head in black soot. Wile E. Coyote chased the Road Runner and fell off a cliff to his destruction. We as children watched Superman cartoons, but we knew not to try and jump off the roof. Teenage boys watched Rocky and Rambo and Conan films. Then they went home without trying to kill anybody. […] We did not need liberals to tell us the difference between pretend and real life. Common sense and our parents handled that. Now schools across the country are canceling gym class. Dodgeball apparently promotes aggression […]. Even rock-paper-scissors is too violent. Rocks and scissors could be used by children to harm each other. Paper requires murdering trees. It's no wonder that Islamists produce strapping young men while America produces sensitive crybabies […]. Muslim children are taught hate in madrassas. They are taught how to kill infidels and the blasphemers. American boys are suspended from school for arranging their school lunch vegetables in the shape of a gun. […] During World War II, young boys volunteered to go overseas to save the world. […] Now American kids on college campuses retreat to their safe spaces to escape from potential microagressions. Islamists cut off heads and limbs and our young boys shriek at the drop of a microaggression. And we haven't seen the worst of it.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Scorched Earth: Restoring the Country after Obama (2016)

Life, Men, Hate, War

“People are more dangerous when they're calm. When they're loud and aggressive that's usually an act and usually trying to compensate.”

Cub Swanson (1983) American mixed martial artist

Swanson on why he does not trash talk http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vIIidAFxBpc/U8qVoWgNv1I/AAAAAAAAW4U/B8eZnJ5rZ-E/s1600/cub+swanson+ufc.PNG

People

“Personally I think the only meaning your life will ever have is whatever your involvement means to someone else. The best strategy I think, if you want your life to mean something, try making someone else’s life meaningful. But if you want your life to mean something five billion years from now, it won’t –no matter what. Sorry. But what matters now still matters now.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Life, Thinking, Personality

“Why? Do you want to rescue me, too, Taylor? … That's what you're trying to do, isn't it? … I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's not what I need right now. I need to handle this my own way.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Melissa Johnson, Chapter 26, p. 308-309
2000s, The Rescue (2000)

Way

“I think cyber security, cyber warfare will be one of the biggest challenges facing the next president, because clearly we're facing at this point two different kinds of adversaries. There are the independent hacking groups that do it mostly for commercial reasons to try to steal information that they can use to make money. But increasingly, we are seeing cyber attacks coming from states, organs of states. The most recent and troubling of these has been Russia. There's no doubt now that Russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds of organizations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money, Thinking, Country

“There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that’s philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that’s science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy’s Law, sometimes offset in part by Brewster’s Factor: that’s engineering.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XLVIII : L’Envoi or Rev. XXII: 13, p. 508

School, Law, Universe, Science

“Homeschooling is not a panacea to all our educational problems, but it is part of the answer. It is a proven option for any of you who wish to try it.”

Pat Farenga American activist

How to Get an Education at Home (1991)

Education, Problem, Parting

“Monday comes like a loaded gun and I'm trying to escape. Want to run. Want to chase the sun; let it wash the world away. Looking out on an empty street, thinking change is what I need. I feel slow. There's an open road and I need some sweet release. I want to get away, got to get away. Going where the road meets the sky, because I need a change. Yeah, I need a change.”

Michelle Branch (1983) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Getaway" http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=MOqxFBKakD0#Timbaland_%26_Michelle_Branch_-_Getaway_%5BMusic_Video%5D_-_SB.TV_EXCLUSIVE (8 June 2010) 2010s

World, Feeling, Thinking, Change

“…it seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognize that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to, to lie to the world to attempt to further their case and to the extent people lie of, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

From the 2004 documentary film Control Room
2000s

People, Truth, Lie, World

“I guess I can't, or my subconscious can't, even imagine a warless world. The best it can do is substitute one kind of war for another. You said, no killing of humans by other humans. So I dreamed up the Aliens. Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you're trying to use, not my rational mind. Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it's easier to conceive of than the motives of war. But you're handling something outside reason. You're trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn't suited to the job. Who has humanitarian dreams?”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 6 (Orr)

War, World, Dreams, Imagination

“There is another story, that we tried to impose upon him [Arafat] cantons, Bantustans. Total lie. We talked about 80%+ of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip. How can it become non-contiguous? And if you have some reservation against this or that curl of the border, at some corner, come to the table, negotiate it, and demand that this will be removed. I can go with you more and more, and I cannot afford spending more time on it, but basically, all these were stories that were invented in order to explain to his own people, and maybe to try to convince honest people in the free world how come that such an opportunity had been missed. Of course, I had my own demands, to protect Israel, to ensure our security, to make sure that we know where do we head. I said loud and clear: we have to put an end to this asymmetric process where we are supposed to give tangible assets, and the Palestinians have just to give vague promises about the nature of future relationship. I said I'm ready to go very far, but I want to know, now, that there is a partner, which is ready and capable to make tough decisions, and painful decisions. I was a great supporter of the peace of the brave, but never a supporter of peace of ostriches, where you put your head in the sand, let whatever happen, happen, and then wake up and say, OK, that's what happened. We cannot afford this approach. That's the reality.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

Pain, People, Lie, World

“I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began again to think instead of trying not to think - good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings [of Arles ] has helped my morale.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 4 May 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 481), p 24 1880s, 1888

Way, Drink, Nature, Thinking

“If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating. And if the layman runs into serious perplexities, he can be consoled with the thought that the points which baffle him are more than likely the ones for which the professionals have not found satisfactory answers.”

Edward Condon (1902–1974) physicist

Physics, in What is Science?: Twelve Eminent Scientists and Philosophers Explain Their Various Fields to the Layman, by James Roy Newman, published by Simon and Schuster (1955), p. 102

Question, Effort

“A tree does not try to be a koala bear. A dog does not try to be a bird. A stone does not pretend it is alive. Why should I pretend I am intelligent, or good-looking, or successful?”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

July 16
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Dogs, Intelligence, Bird, Tree

“My first profession was singing, and I'm always guilty that I don't practice enough… I love to exercise, to write, to be Mrs. Edwards, to be with my kids, and there's just not enough time in the day to do all the things I want to do. I just do what seems to have to be done, but I'm never as ready as I think I should be. I try to deal with priorities, but it tears me apart. Unfortunately something always has to go by the wayside. Ultimately, I guess, it all balances out.”

Julie Andrews (1935) British actress, singer, author, theatre director, and dancer

The New York Times (14 March 1982)

Love, Exercises, Thinking, Tear

“I know she loves the sunrise
No longer sees it with her sleeping eyes
And I know that when she said she's gonna try
Well it might not work because of other ties and
I know she usually has some other ties
And I wouldn't want to break 'em, nah, I wouldn't want to break 'em
Maybe she'll help me to untie this but
Until then well, I'm gonna have to lie too”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Flake.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Love, Lie, Sleep, Help

“Sometimes a god comes,” Selver said. “He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Section 8
Hainish Cycle, The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

Death, God, World, Dreams

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love, Life, Death, God

“If you hold a wooden staff with a tight grip and try to raise it overhead, it feels quite heavy. If you hold it lightly it feels light. In the same way you should not approach things with too serious an attitude. Take a lighter point of view. In other words, think positively.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

53
Ki Sayings (2003)

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Light

“When less than four years old I was standing with my nurse, Mary Ward, watching the shadows on the wall from branches of an elm behind which the moon had risen. I have never forgot those shadows and am often trying to paint them.”

Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker

The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher (AH Palmer, London, 1892)

Painting

“Some fella said to me, "Have you had LSD, Paul?" And I said "Yes." And it was only 'cuz I was going to just be honest with him. There's no other reason. I didn't want to spread it or anything, you know. I'm not trying to do anything except answer his question. But he happened to be a reporter, and I happened to be a Beatle.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Pop Chronicles: Show 39 - The Rubberization of Soul: The great pop music renaissance. Part 5 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19798/m1/, interview recorded 5.14.1968 http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1968.0514.beatles.html

Question

“If America says to you today that they are proud of the fact that, for two hundred years, they have been trying to make their union more perfect, it sounds very reasonable. But, in Nigeria, you are not even allowed to question your union, which is ridiculous.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

9 July, 2001, as quoted by Rudolph Okonkwo, My Last Interview With Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu - Rudolf Okonkwo http://saharareporters.com/column/my-last-interview-dim-chukwuemeka-ojukwu-rudolf-okonkwo, Sahara Reporters (26 November, 2011)

Question, Perfection

“At the level of firms, therefore, only those whose cultural repertoire gives them transactional capacity throughout the I-Space can summon and adequate learning response to any emerging gaps between technology and culture. Those operating from too narrow a cultural base in the space, however, must of necessity lose control of the SLC unless they can complement their limited cultural repertoire through carefully selected interfirm and intercultural collaborations – i. e. through an externalization of transactions that link them with agents located elsewhere in the space. However, they will then confront the same problems of integration that more culturally diverse firms encounter inside their organization when trying to coordinate the activities of different functions or businesses. There is no cheap grace.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 151; As cited in: Ortiz et al. (2006)

Business, Problem, Learning

“Try as we will to be culturally aggrieved by day, we find the gringos kind of attractive in the moonlight.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

“There's a deeper reason, though, for not striving for excellence,… and it has to do with how we view ourselves and our endeavors in this world. Many of us recognize that not trying is a reasonable excuse for not succeeding. That is, if we don't give something our best effort, we can always point to that fact as the basis for poor results. If, on the other hand, we give… everything we've got and still don't win, well, that's a fairly bitter pill to swallow…. I don't buy this defeatist attitude.”

John Vorhaus

Poker Night (2004)

World, Effort

“Roe was a shock to me because even at 16 or 17 years old I understood that abortion was killing an unborn baby. I mean it was simple and straightforward and indeed it is simple and straightforward. We try to make this complicated, but it's simple and straightforward. You've got a new human life developing in the mother's womb and abortion is the business of killing that baby. Now, the Planned Parenthood videos have made that very graphic but you didn't actually need the videos, uh, at least I didn't need to the videos to know that. But even then we didn't think of abortion as something Democrats were for and Republicans were against. The division of the parties into a pro-abortion party and an anti-abortion party came a little later.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2016, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Life, Business, Thinking, Baby

“The doctrines that by keeping out foreign goods more wealth, and consequently more employment, will be created at home, are either true or they are not true. We contend that they are not true. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

From "Why I am a Free Trader" (1905), Churchill revised this several times, the earliest recorded version coming from the speech "For Free Trade" at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 19 February 1904:
It is the theory of the Protectionist that imports are an evil. He thinks that if you shut out the foreign imported manufactured goods you will make these goods yourselves, in addition to the goods which you make now, including those goods which we make to exchange for the foreign goods that come in. If a man can believe that he can believe anything. (Laughter.) We Free-traders say it is not true. To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle. (Laughter and cheers.)
Early career years (1898–1929)
Source: [Churchill, Winston, Stead, W.T., Coming Men on Coming Questions, 13 April 1905, Chapter 1: Why I am a Free Trader, https://archive.org/details/comingmenoncomin00stea]
Source: [Churchill, Winston, Rhodes James, Robert, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, Chelsea House Publishers / R.R. Bowker Company, 1974, 0835206939]

Home, Wealth

“I made the decision that I couldn't not run. I had to run. This country is in great danger. It's in great difficulty. It's being taken the wrong way by a leadership team that has no real vision for the country other than trying to posture and pose and aim for winning the next election. I think Americans deserve a more visionary, a more selfless and a more dedicated leadership than that.”

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

CNN Interview (10 December 2003) http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0312/10/ltm.12.html

Way, Thinking, Decision, Country

“It gives my brain a rest, painting flowers. I don't feel the same tension as when I have a model in front of me. When I paint flowers, I put on colours and try out values boldly, without worrying about wasting a canvas. I wouldn't dare to do it with a figure; I'd be afraid of spoiling the whole thing. And the experience I gain this way is then applied to my pictures.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 196 : quote on painting flowers, to art-buyer George Riviere, who was watching a flower still-life of Renoir.

Way, Feeling, Flowers, Painting

“If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 21
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux

Wisdom, World

“It is surprising what improper and indecent contentions these popular elections occasioned. I have oftener than once known half-a-dozen candidates all trying for a vacant parish, and preaching alternately, to give their electors an opportunity of determining what they liked best. Voice and action, as is remarked in a very humorous pamphlet respecting London lectureships, almost constantly carried it. … Preachers and ministers so elected, continuing still in some degree dependent on the people, continued also chiefly to cultivate those arts by which their favour had first been gained. Their sermons were light, flippant, and ordinary; but their manner of preaching was pleasing and popular.”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

"Reminiscences of an American Loyalist" (first published serially in "Notes and Queries", 1874-)

People, Art, Light, Dependency

“I am not sorry for having wrought in common, crude material so much; that is the right American stuff; and perhaps hereafter, when my din is done, if anyone is curious to know what that noise was, it will be found to have proceeded from a small insect which was scraping about on the surface of our life and trying to get into its meaning for the sake of the other insects larger or smaller. That is, such has been my unconscious work; consciously, I was always, as I still am, trying to fashion a piece of literature out of the life next at hand.”

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) author, critic and playwright from the United States

Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (26 April 1903)

Life, Literature, Fashion

“There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people and that's the only way that our campaign could be doing what it's doing.And I'm not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across who are praying that a little will become much and it has, and it defies all explanation. It has confounded the pundits, and I'm enjoying every minute of their trying to figure it out. And until they look at it from a just experience beyond human, they'll never figure it out. And that's probably just as well. That's honestly why its happening.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Liberty University convocation, , quoted in * 2007-12-06
Huckabee: God Wants Me to Be President
James Joyner
Outside the Beltway
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/huckabee_god_wants_me_to_be_president/
asked what he attributed his surge in the polls to

People, Way, Boy, Fish

“What is needed is a noticeable unnoticeable style,… a directness of speech that seems to one judging easily imitable, to one trying it nothing less so.”

J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) American writer

The Problem of Style, Fawcett, New York 1966
General