Quotes about try
page 45

“The regular rhythms of factory production and its clear divisions of work time and nonwork time tend to decline in the realm of immaterial labor. Think how at the high end of labor market companies like Microsoft try to make the office more like home, offering free meals and exercise programs to keep employees in the office as many of their waking hours as possible. At the low end of the labor market workers have to juggle several job to make ends meet. Such practices always existed, but today, with the passage from Fordism to post-Fordism, the increased flexibility and mobility imposed on workers, and the decline of the stable, long-term employment typical of factory work, this tends to become the norm. At both the high end and low ends or labor market the new paradigm undermines the division between work time and the time of life.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

145
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Life, Exercises, Home, Thinking

“You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! And anyway, it’s like your bank balance, you know: you always have much less than you think. […] Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms… "Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky… We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha…" But it wont be like that[…] You don't want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to, would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Women, Men, Drink, Thinking

“FOG: Fog covers this region. / Can you still hear my voice? / I don't understand trees. / They try to grab our hair. / A branch has fallen on you. I know that. / Could you look behind me: / is there a load / on my back, as well?”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Understanding, Tree

“Magic and art tend to share a lot of the same language. They both talk about evocation, invocation, and conjuring. If you’re trying to conjure a character, then maybe you should treat that with the respect that you would if you were trying to conjure a demon. Because if an image of a god is a god, then in some sense the image of a demon is a demon. I’m thinking of people like Malcolm Lowry, the exquisite author of Under the Volcano. There are kabbalistic demons that are lurking all the way through Under the Volcano, and I assume they were probably similar forces to the ones that eventually overwhelmed Lowry’s life, such as the drinking and the madness. When I hear alcoholics talk about having their demons, I think that they’re probably absolutely literally correct.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)

Life, God, People, Alcohol

“My beliefs are clearly that of a hardened skeptic […] I use the term "occult" to refer to any of all of these subjects. The reader is forewarned that The Skeptics Dictionary does not try to present a balanced account of occult subjects. If anything, this book is a Davidian counterbalance to the Goliath of occult literature. I hope that an occasional missile hits its mark…”

Robert Todd Carroll book The Skeptic's Dictionary

The Skeptic's Dictionary (book), pp. 1-3

Books, Hope, Literature

“Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm…”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Shelter from the Storm

Imagination

“Probably the respect or stigma attaching to particular classes of actions arose from the fact that these classes of actions were—or were thought to be—beneficial or injurious to the society of the time; but it is also clear that this good or bad name once created clings to the action long after the action has ceased in the course of social progress to be beneficial in the one case, or injurious in the other; and indeed long after the thinkers of the race have discovered the discrepancy. And so in a short time arises a great confusion in the popular mind between what is really good or evil for the race and what is reputed to be so—the bolder spirits who try to separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their own martyrdom.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Evil, Time

“Mr. Tsuburaya was a gentleman. He was very charismatic. Mr. Tsuburaya would never express his anger at me or the other monster actors. However, he would express his anger at the members of his staff. Mr. Tsuburaya often pretended to be asleep when he in fact was just thinking about his work. Once he had decided what he wanted to do, he would pretend to wake up. He then would begin giving instructions to the members of his staff. There were two things Mr. Tsuburaya hated. One was snakes and the other was bloodshed. I remember that someone once asked Mr. Tsuburaya why he never showed bloodshed in the monster films on which he worked. Mr. Tsuburaya replied that he never showed it because he knew that children went to see the movies. One day, a Toho employee suggested that the studio produce a film about a giant snake. Mr. Tsuburaya didn't like the idea, so the movie was never made. Mr. Tsuburaya would try to inspire the people with whom he worked. His inspiration helped me keep playing giant monsters for eighteen years.”

Haruo Nakajima (1929–2017) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Haruo Nakajima Interview" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/nakajima.htm, Kaiju Conversations (March 1995)

Hate, Children, People, Idea

“You must purge yourself before finding faults in others.
When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake.
This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement.
Do not look at others' bodies with envy or with superiority.
All people are born with different constitutions. Never compare with others.
Each one's capacities are a function of his or her internal strength. Know your capacities and continually improve upon them.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 60

People, Way, Envy

“I am expecting to come second, at least…I am not putting in all these hours and putting up with media trying to come second, I am not…I am trying to win this damn thing.”

Melissa Lee (1966) New Zealand politician

Nats ask Act MP to lay off Melissa Lee, Patrick, Gower, The New Zealand Herald, 23 May 2009, 2010-07-13 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10574128, After the radio interview Mount Albert by-election campaign, 2009

“Judy: [yelling at defendant, who is being sued for bleaching plaintiff's clothes and has just cursed at plaintiff in court] LISTEN TO ME!!! Where do you think you are? You think you're on Springer? [audience laughs] You're NOT! You're NOT! You wanna go to a therapist, go someplace else---
Defendant: No, I don't need a therapist.
Judy: Listen to me!
Defendant: I don't need to see a therapist… [continues trying to talk over Judy]
Judy: Only one person is going to have--only one… judgment for the plaintiff in the amount of $5000! Your counterclaim is dismissed!
Defendant: Excuse me? No! What about my computer? But what about my computer? But what about my computer?
Judy: [getting up to walk off the set] That's all. Your counterclaim is dismissed.
Defendant: …and you just gonna walk away like that? That don't even make no sense! What about my computer, I don't get no chance to say nothin'…
Judy: [over defendant's continued protests] I told you - I told you: it's my playpen, I have the word. Goodbye, go someplace else!”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1cYWq1bm_Q
Dialogue

Thinking, Sense, Chance, Personality

“I cannot bear to look at a film that I made before 1990. Maybe 1985. There's no sense even trying to explain it. I really just can't watch myself. I see all the machinery at work and it just drives me nuts, so I don't look at anything.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in John Hiscock, "Still the blue-eyed boy," http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/07/13/bfnewm13.xml The Telegraph (2002-07-13)

Sense

“Style… the very hall-mark of great art… there is little use in trying to define style.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Art

“I'm trying to figure out, let's see, I'm in my room, in New York city, and I want to put a little spray, so I can, you know [mimes spraying] right, right, but I hear they don't want me to use the hairspray, they want me to use the pump, because the other one, which I really like better than going [mimes pumping] bang, bang, bang, and then it comes out in big globs, right, and it's stuck in your hair and you say, "Oh my god I've got to take a shower again, my hair's all screwed up", right, I want to use hairspray, but they say "Don't use hairspray, it's bad for the ozone", so I'm sitting in this concealed [sic] apartment, this concealed unit (you know I do live in a very apartment, right) but it's sealed (it's beautiful) I don't think anything gets out, and I'm not supposed to be using hairspray!”

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

Speaking at a rally in Hilton Head, SC https://www.c-span.org/video/?402610-1/donald-trump-campaign-rally-hilton-head-south-carolina (30 December 2015) 2010s, 2015

God, Beauty, Thinking

“I want people to understand that we, the American people, are not each other's enemies. The real enemies are those people who are trying to divide us into every little possible group.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

"Dr. Ben Carson: ‘We, The American People, Are Not Each Other’s Enemies’" http://www.cnsnews.com/video/newsbusters/dr-ben-carson-we-american-people-are-not-each-other-s-enemies, CNS News (May 21, 2014)

People, Understanding

“Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Superstition of Divorce (1920)

“More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Akio Morita (1989) in: Peter Krass ed. (2000) The Book of Management Wisdom: Classic Writings by Legendary Managers. p. 235.

People

“[Romeo … transfers his affections from Rosalind to Juliet] 'A lover, my dear Lady Betty,' said Flora, 'may, I conceive, persevere in his suit, under very discouraging circumstances. Affection can (now and then) withstand very severe storms of rigour, but not a long polar frost of downright indifference. Don't, even with your attractions, try the experiment upon any lover whose faith you value. Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope, but not altogether without it.”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter LIV

Love, Faith, Hope, Lovers

“Woody Allen says at the end of Annie Hall that we’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s so difficult in real life […] if we can accept Allen’s as a definition of art, then sabermetrics is absolutely an art. And, just as Kalkman notes, it’s an art whose practitioners are bent on seeing justice done — in baseball, if nowhere else.”

Carson Cistulli (1979) American poet and writer

The Long Hello: Some Notes on Luck (2009)

Life, Justice, Art, Perfection

“If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Letter to Hume Logan" April 22, 1958. Excerpted in 'Letters of Note' by Shaun Usher.
1950s

Life, Search, Sense, Parting

“I try to avoid categorizing music as much as I can, though. Everyone steals so much from everyone else these days, the lines between genres are very washed-out.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

Music

“I have no breaking point, and all you have to do is look in my eyes and realize I have laughed in the face of temptation time and time again. I have never tapped out to society's attempts at peer pressure. You try to stick a beer in my hand with the same commercials that have hypnotized all of you people, and that sell you all your narcotics and things you're addicted to. Well, I'm harder than any alcohol you can drink, I'm straighter than any line you can snort up your nose, and I certainly can hurt you a lot faster than any pill you put on your tongue.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 4, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

People, Alcohol, Drink, Beer

“If you know a better place to live right now than this country, get a ticket and try to get there.”

Ray Lyman Wilbur (1875–1949) President of Stanford University

Adress to Stanford Student Body, 1940. "Ray Lyman Wilbur Taken By Death", Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1949

Country

“The hardest thing to do is to swing quietly, with control and restraint. Lots of bands swing loudly. I refuse to let my band play loudly in order to try to swing when it isn’t swinging softly. I think that the best jazz in the long run is the jazz that is controlled and will swing on its own terms.”

John Dankworth (1927–2010) British musician

Times obituary, 8 Feb 2010 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7018290.ece

Thinking

“… as a matter of fact it is nice to paint a happy picture after a sad one. I think there is a kind of loneliness in a lot of them which I don't think about as the fact that I'm lonely and therefore I paint lonely pictures, but I like kind of lonely things anyhow; so if the forms express that to me, there is a certain excitement that I have about that.... What I try to do is to create the painting so that the overall thing has the particular emotion; not just the forms in it.... in other words, there's a particular static or heavy form that can have a look to it, an experience that translated through the form; so then it does have a mood. And when that is there, well then it becomes it becomes a painting whereas all the other pictures that have far more interesting shapes and so on, don't become that to me.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

n.p.
1960's, Living Art, 1963

Happiness, Sadness, Mood, Thinking

“One of the things that was introduced to me at an early stage in life was to try to make stuff happen. But nothing ever worked that way for me. What I learned on my own was that to try and play God with your life will wreck your brain and your nervous system, and mess up your natural direction in the course that's already there…But look, I just don't want to read about me being made into a basket case because of my work. It's self-pity that I hate. I mean, it comes with the territory. An actor with any conviction goes the extra mile.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Movieline (1991)

Life, God, Hate, Way

“Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed … Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.”

Philip K. Dick book A Maze of Death

A Maze of Death (1970)

Youth, Age, Time

“If music is what can be called my strategy, then every singer should be trying that.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

About strategy http://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/play/indias-idol-shreya-ghoshal/

Music

“Back at the Philadelphia Worldcon (which seems a million years ago), I announced the famous five-year gap: I was going to skip five years forward in the story, to allow some of the younger characters to grow older and the dragons to grow larger, and for various other reasons. I started out writing on that basis in 2001, and it worked very well for some of my myriad characters but not at all for others, because you can't just have nothing happen for five years. If things do happen you have to write flashbacks, a lot of internal retrospection, and that's not a good way to present it. I struggled with that essentially wrong direction for about a year before finally throwing it out, realizing there had to be another interim book. That became A Feast for Crows, where the action is pretty much continuous from the preceding book. Even so, that only accounts for one year. Why the four after that? I don't know, except that this was a very tough book to write -- and it remains so, because I've only finished half. Going in, I thought I could do something about the length of the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, roughly 1,200 pages in manuscript. But I passed that and there was a lot more to write. Then I passed the length of the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was something like 1,500 pages in manuscript and gave my publishers all around the world lots of production problems. I didn't really want to make any cuts because I had this huge story to tell. We started thinking about dividing it in two and doing it as A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two, but the more I thought about that the more I really did not like it. Part One would have had no resolution whatsoever for 18 viewpoint characters and their 18 stories. Of course this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview with Locus magazine (November 2005)

Books, World, Way, Problem

“When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. You need not push life about. Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, (…) Don’t be afraid, don’t resist, don’t delay. Be what you are. There is nothing to be afraid of. Trust and try. Experiment honestly. Give your real being a chance to shape your life. You will not regret.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Present moment
Source: I am That, P.140.

Life, Effort, Appearance, Chance

“We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1955)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

“I’m often called, so often called in the media, it’s like a part of my name “white supremacist” or whatever. I’m not one. I don’t want white people to be supreme. I don’t believe, in fact, that we should even have bases in 65 countries of the world I don’t think we should be in Iraq. I don’t believe we should try to control politics of the South American countries or the Southeast Asia or in Africa, or anywhere else in the world. But I do think we have a right to preserve our own culture, own heritage in our own country.”

David Duke (1950) American White nationalist, white supremacist, writer, right-wing politician, and a former Republican Louisiana …

Podcast (4 July 2006)

People, World, Thinking, Parting

“I know I will almost certainly forget it all again, but I hope next time, I will be able to recall quickly. For this moment to become a movement, we have to keep trying to remember.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Hope, Time, Forgetting

“You have been born in this world as a human being to worship God; therefore try to acquire love for His Lotus Feet. Why do you trouble yourself to know a hundred other things? What will you gain by discussing philosophy? Look here, one ounce of liquor is enough to intoxicate you. What is the use of your trying to find out how many gallons of liquor there are in the tavern?”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 901

Love, God, World

“This Sunday, for some reason, I had not gone to Church. All the rest of the house-party had gone and there was no one in the house but myself and the servants. I was sitting in the drawing-room reading. The door opened and in walked a tall man dressed in European clothes (very well cut, I remember) but with a turban on his head. He came in and sat down beside me. I was so petrified at the sight of the turban that I could not make a sound or ask what he was doing there. Then he started to talk. He told me there was some work that it was planned that I could do in the world but that it would entail my changing my disposition very considerably; I would have to give up being such an unpleasant little girl and must try and get some measure of self-control. My future usefulness to Him and to the world was dependent upon how I handled myself and the changes I could manage to make. He said that if I could achieve real self-control I could then be trusted and that I would travel all over the world and visit many countries, "doing your Master's work all the time." Those words have rung in my ears ever since. He emphasised that it all depended upon me…”

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

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter I, Part 2

World, Travel, Girl, Change

“We had a pretty good time together, when she wasn't trying to kill me!”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

1954, in an interview with Hedda Hopper regarding his marriage to Esperanza "Chata" Baur. Quoted in An A-Z of Hellraisers: A Comprehensive Compendium of Outrageous Insobriety (2010) by Robert Sellers http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=%22We+had+a+pretty+good+time+together%2C+when+she+wasn't+trying+to+kill+me!%22&rlz=1W1SKPT_en&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2359l9344l0l9672l4l4l0l0l0l0l531l1141l0.2.1.5-1l4l0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbm=bks&source=og&sa=N&tab=wp&ei=GukKT_nkCMXf8gO2yqTMAQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=6f77fa42573fca86&biw=1024&bih=632

Time

“You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double the efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I'm advocating is — Let chaos reign, then rein chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

1995, p. 229; As cited in: Cristina Chaminade, ‎Bino Catasús (2007) Intellectual Capital Revisited: Paradoxes in the Knowledge Intensive Organization.. p. 94
1980s - 1990s, High Output Management (1983)

Life, Way, Effort

“The writer has found, in analyzing and diagnosing organization and accounting work, that charts can express more on one page than is sometimes expressed in several chapters of writing, and has been the author and originator of many methods of charting industrial expressions. It is necessary, as a first step, for analytical and other purposes, to make a chart expressing all of the relations governing the organization of a business so as to show the very foundation upon which all authorities, accounting, and business transactions are based and conducted. There have been more failures scored both personally and financially for lack of these very elements in a business than by reason of any other one thing. As well try to build a house without a foundation as to try to conduct a business, especially a manufacturing business, without proper organization.”

Clinton Edgar Woods (1863) American engineer

Source: Organizing a factory (1905), p. 23-24

Failure, Business, Housing, Personality

“I guess what it means is this: to be human is to be fragile. We are easily hurt, and not just physically. We are easily hurt emotionally, too. So, as you move through life, my son, try not to hurt others.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 21 (p. 204)

Life, Hurt

“Because if you're not born in the United States, you cannot be president. And, there is a real question. And if this birth certificate exists, you know what I get a kick out of? The Governor of Hawaii says, "I remember when he was born 50 years ago." I doubt it. I think this guy should be investigated. I doubt it. He remembers when Obama was born? Give me a break! He's just trying to do something for his party. The fact is, if you're not born in the United States, you cannot be president. He is having a hard time — he spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue, millions of dollars in legal fees trying to get away from this issue. And I'll tell you what, I brought it up just routinely and all of a sudden, a lot of facts are emerging, and I'm starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country.”

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

About Barack Obama's birth certificate.

2010s, 2011

Guy, Birth, Question, Thinking

“In 1929 Oskar Klein stumbled into an apparent paradox when trying to describe the scattering of a relativistic electron by a square potential using Dirac’s wave equation. … In order to capture the essence of the problem without entering into unnecessary complication we will study Klein’s paradox in the context of the Klein– Gordon equation.”

Luis Álvarez-Gaumé Spanish physicist

Source: An Invitation to Quantum Field Theory (2012), Ch. 1 : Why Do We Need Quantum Field Theory After All?

Problem, Study

“Empathy for women is an attribute of masculinity. When men play the protector role they are trying to save a woman from grief or pain. If they had no glimpse of her grief or pain, they wouldn’t know when to protect.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 33.

Women, Men, Pain

“When you remember how few Jews there are in Italy and how relatively few there are in Germany, one must wonder at the violence and the bitterness of this perse cution. The number of Jews in Italy is only a small fraction of those in the city of New York, while there are in the city of New York six times as many Jews as there were in the German Reich when the last war ended and possibly more than four times as many as there are there now. Yet the persecution, personal, physical, family, financial, goes on, openly and secretly, in a way that is perfectly appalling. To my great astonishment, this anti-Semitic persecution has been violently and publicly revived in this country within the last few weeks or months, and it is as discreditable to us that this should have happened as anything that we can imagine.'
Jews differ among themselves just as do Spaniards or Italians or Canadians or Americans. There are some who belong to one party, some who belong to another some whp hold one point of view, some who hold a point of view that is contradictory. The notion that all who belong to that race or profess that faith are of one mind in everything that relates to their public relationships is a grotesque departure from fact. But if you can play upon an excited public emotion by the use of these terms and by the insinuation that the entire Hebrew population is engaged, let us say as we have been told from the platform recently in trying to get this nation into war, such statements, although absolutely contradictory to every well-known fact, will, if repeated long enough, be believed and acted upon by a certain number of our unthinking population.
We cannot protest too vigorously and too strongly against that sort of thing. It may be the Ku Klux Klan persecuting the Catholics, it may be the anti-Semites persecuting the Jews: but persecution on racial or religious ground has absolutely no place in a nation given over to liberty and which calls itself a democracy.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

War, Family, Faith, Way

“Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

World, Heart

“The main thing is to make up your mind. If you're going to do it, do it, and if you're just going to halfway do it don't even try. This is a very demanding thing. I stay simple, I didn't get a whole lot of education, so most of it's just coming from what I gathered up. If you stay honest we've all got in common that we're all different. If you stay real deadly honest and write about some very interesting things then you'll be a good one. A lot of people just don't like to get honest but it's the cheapest psychiatrist there is. I think that's the way to look at it.”

Billy Joe Shaver (1939) American singer-songwriter

Statement made by Shaver when asked for an advice to young musicians
A Conversation with Billy Joe Shaver (2014)

People, Education, Way, Thinking

“There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Interviewed in The Guardian, December 4, 2005.

Truth, Way, Feeling, Personality

“When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. […] The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. […] The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

You and Your Research (1986)

Way, Error, Problem, Tree

“The foolish thing was trying to solve the problem all by myself. But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories the more I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Dreams, Problem, Memory

“I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them … that's all the powers of the President amount to.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Quoted by Richard Neustadt in Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership http://books.google.com/books?id=-rxEAAAAIAAJ&q=&quot;I+sit+here+all+day+trying+to+persuade+people+to+do+the+things+they+ought+to+have+sense+enough+to+do+without+my+persuading+them&quot;+&quot;that's+all+the+powers+of+the+President+amount+to&quot; (1964)

People, Sense

“You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 216
Paper Towns (2008)

People, Imagination

“We need mandatory national service so we will all take part in performing the collective tasks we know are ours. We need mandatory national service because duty and honor are as necessary to us as oxygen and water. That's what I was trying to tell the Army in my application to the JAG corps at the age of 52. And that's what the radical middle needs to tell the American people.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 12, "Bring Back the Draft, for Everyone This Time," p. 133.

People, Age, Water, Parting

“Then make those studies outside. With the utmost simplicity you try to get rid of all the so-called manners, and try in one word to follow nature with feeling, but without thinking about the works of others. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Maak dan die studies buiten; met de grootste eenvoudigheid, tracht u van alle zogenaamde manier te ontdoen en tracht in een woord de natuur met gevoel maar zonder denken aan het werk van anderen, na te volgen. Quote in Roelof's letter to his pupil Hendrik W. Mesdag, 1866; as cited in Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850, Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 16, note 7 1860's

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Study

“Music and painting should never be literary, a very subtle distinction according to Renoir. As soon as I try to represent an individual, their physiognomy and attitudes, I become a literary artist.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

Quote in a notebook, after having visited Renoir; as cited in Berthe Morisot, ed. Delafond and Genet-Bondeville, 1997, p. 54
undated quotes

Music, Painting

“After doing the imaginary landscapes until say 1956, in ’57 I came out with the first Burst painting… There was a different type of space than I had ever used and it was a further clarification of what I was trying to do. The thing that was interesting that it was a return to a focal point, but it was a focal point with the kind of space that existed in traditional painting. Because this was like a solitary image or two images that were just floating in the canvas space. They had to hold the space and they also had to create all the movement – that took place within the rectangle.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Source: 1960s, Interview with Dorothy Seckler, 1967, p. 55-59.

Painting

“Does the Secretary of State agree that it is time for a serious review of Britain's defence expenditure, which now totals more than £23 billion a year? Should not we cancel the nuclear missile programme and consign all nuclear missiles back to base as part of a programme of worldwide disarmament? Should not we try to cut conventional expenditure to at least the European average, which would save £6 billion a year? Should not we also ensure that skilled workers who are at present manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and other forms of armaments are put to making socially useful products, including materials for the health service and housing industry—and recognise that world peace is best achieved by people working for peace rather than by arming themselves for war?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1993/mar/09/strategic-review in the House of Commons (9 March 1993). 1990s

War, People, Health, World

“I give you my revised list of the two commandments: "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie", and "thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to". Two is all you need; Moses could have carried them down the hill in his fuckin' pocket, and I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment: "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself".”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"The Ten Commandments"
Complaints and Grievances (2001)

Faith, Religion

“Those rebels who rise up to try to wrest back power from despotic forces will endure not only the violence of the state, but the hatred and vigilante violence meted out by the self-deluded victims of exploitation. The systems of propaganda will relentlessly demonize those who resist.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Illusion of Freedom" (2015)

“Come, let us arm with speed; and let us two
Try, what our forces may united do.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book XIII
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

Speed

“Hi, how are you today? I'm Tony, I'm going to be your server. I've got some very exciting specials to tell you folks about right here. We've got our deep-pan re-re-fried chocolate ice cream pizza, which comes with a complementary pacemaker. If you're watching your weight you might want to try our No Hope Protein Salad, absolutely delicious. Philippe, our maitre d', will dig out some photographs of you looking kind of tubby, you know, on the Internet, and then we all kind of point and laugh at you and just sort of rub a single chickpea on your lip until you cry. Would you like some water?”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

During a skit before a commercial break on BBC America Comedy Live Presents Dylan Moran (2005).
Other

Hope, Water, Cry

“We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifty million.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

Women, Men, Children, Truth

“You don't need to turn the light switch on and off, again! You have absolutely NAILED DOWN the principle finding of that experiment; when you turn the lights off, daddy can't see ANYTHING. He steps on your toys trying to find you and kill you… And breaks his foot!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Light

“Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work … for instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie.”

Patricia Rozema (1958) Canadian film director

As quoted in Weird Sex and Snowshoes : And Other Canadian Film Phenomena (2001) by Katherine Monk, p. 150

People, Books, Justice, Problem

“Those who try to combat the production of shoddy pictures are enemies of the best art today. Those woodland lakes in a thousand sitting-rooms with gold-tinted wallpaper belong to the profoundest inspirations of art. It always feels tragic to see people labouring to saw off the branch they are sitting on.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

People, Art, Feeling

“Deep inside, I am a shy man. And in the presence of colorful characters, I am a clam. I never try to out-eccentric the eccentricsǃ”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

As quoted in "New York Close-Up" http://www.mediafire.com/view/sllj68n3ug6dgju/Concert_Thursday_to_Aid_Memori.jpg.

Color

“So you say there are spaces, opening wide?
Oh believe me, there's day longer than nights.
And you could be happy, if only you'd try.
But you don't try. No you don't try.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

Happiness, Night

“I voted numerous times when I was a Senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.”

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

Town hall event at a high school in Windham; transcript: "Clinton: ‘You Have to Control Your Borders’" http://latinousa.org/2015/11/09/clinton-you-have-to-control-your-borders-video/ by Julio Ricardo Varela, Latino USA (9 November 2015) Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

Money, Time

“Last night I was east with them
And west within
Trying to be for you what you wanna see.”

Ben Folds (1966) American musician

"Best Imitation of Myself", Ben Folds Five (1995).
Song lyrics, With Ben Folds Five

Night

“I'm trying to wean myself off sports, it's too time consuming. I don't watch football anymore, I gave that up. I got tired of the interviews after the games, because the winning players always give credit to God, and the losers blame themselves. You know, just once I'd like to hear a player say, 'Yeah, we were in the game, until Jesus made me fumble. He hates our team.”

Jeff Stilson American comedian

Comedy Central Presents Jeff Stilson (2003)

God, Hate, Game, Sport

“Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." … "But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales."”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

… Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."
Chap. 20, "If They Hang You"
spoken by the character "Sam Spade" to "Brigid O'Shaughnessy."
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Love, Money, God, World

“To see a promising solution to a dilemma and then just leave it to questionable development at its own pace without trying to aid its implementation would seem a dereliction.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

The Human Predicament: A Way Out? (1985), p. 4

Question

“Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword.
Like punching underwater,
You never can hit who you're trying for.
Some need the exhibition
And some have to know they tried,
It's the chemical weapon for the war that's ragin' on inside.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Belief
Song lyrics, Continuum (2006)

War, Beauty

“We could try freedom for a while. We had it for a long time. That's where you sell something and I agree to buy it because I like it. That is how we operate in most of rest of the marketplace other than health care. Now the president has said you can only buy certain types of health care that I approve of, and anything I don't approve of, you are not allowed to purchase. We could try freedom. I think it might work. It works everywhere else.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2015-01-05
Sen. Rand Paul's remedy for ObamaCare: 'We could try freedom for awhile. We had it for a long time'
Greta
Susteren
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/2015/01/06/sen-rand-pauls-remedy-obamacare-we-could-try-freedom-awhile-we-had-it-long-time
2015-03-01
2010s

Health, Thinking, Freedom, Time

“[Glossary of Broken Dreams] was born out of the frustration that debate culture (not only) on digital platforms has become radically fragmented and fractalized, making it hard to call it discourse. It's a Tower of Babel-like context confusion that pleases me as a nerd, but as a political being who wants society to progress, it doesn't please me at all. […] I just thought it was time for something like a political spring cleaning of concepts. Because picking up the broom and taking a chance to get rid of stuff is the only way to prevent us all from becoming social liberal hoarders. One of my examples is the concept of privacy that, at the moment, everyone coddles like a puppy. Let me say this, as a good old Neo-leftist, I'm having problems with the conservative and deeply bourgeois can of worms that the privacy debate entails. I think it's time to change our thought patterns here. Instead of trying to find ways to defend our privacy come hell or high water, we should ask ourselves why privacy is such a major concern for us? Is what we're trying to achieve here just reformist symptom-control rather than a solution to the underlying problems?”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from an interview about Grenzfurthner's film Glossary of Broken Dreams (via Boing Boing https://boingboing.net/2018/05/24/at-the-golden-calf-slaughterho.html)

Dreams, Way, Spring, Hell

“I hope many aspiring photographers will be inspired by what I do and join the industry. It makes me proud to see my students doing well in this profession and trying to give us the healthy competition we need.”

Prito Reza (1984) Photographer

Hope

“Hillary Clinton's catastrophic immigration plan will bring vastly more radical Islamic immigration into this country, threatening not only our society but our entire way of life. When it comes to radical Islamic terrorism, ignorance is not bliss. It's deadly — totally deadly. … Clinton's State Department was in charge of admissions and the admissions process for people applying to enter from overseas. Having learned nothing from these attacks, she now plans to massively increase admissions without a screening plan including a 500 percent increase in Syrian refugees coming into our country. Tell me, tell me – how stupid is that? This could be a better, bigger, more horrible version than the legendary Trojan Horse ever was. Altogether, under the Clinton plan, you'd be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of the children and their children. Not only their children, by the way, they're trying to take over our children and convince them how wonderful ISIS is and how wonderful Islam is and we don't know what's happening. The burden is on Hillary Clinton to tell us why she believes immigration from these dangerous countries should be increased without any effective system to really to screen. We're not screening people.”

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

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

Life, Children, People, Stupidity

“I have tried, in this book, to do three things. I try first to bring a greater awareness of the way in which the differences and the similarities in the bodies of human beings are the basis on which all our learnings about our sex, and our relationship to the other sex, are built. Talking about our bodies is a complex and difficult matter. We are so used to covering them up, to referring to them obliquely with slang terms or in a borrowed language to hiding even infants' sex membership under blue and pink ribbons. It is difficult to become aware of those things about us which have been, and will always be, patterned by our own particular modesties and reticences. We reject, and very rightly, catalogues of caresses arranged in frequency tables, or accounts of childhood that read like a hospital chart…”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 4-5

Books, Sex, Way, Learning

“Animals deserve to be treated with kindness. I love animals, and I don't believe humans can treat them as commodities and cause them harm. … I officially became a vegan on June 1, 2009. Even though it's quite a change in terms of nutrition, I have never felt better or so healthy in my life. Considering that I'm a professional athlete, that's quite important … I understand the impact I have in joining many groups like PETA. I don't do it to force people to be vegetarian or vegan. I just want to educate people on the subject to make this world a better place. … Many people … refuse to get educated on the matter because just like me, they're sensitive and afraid to make a change. But my friends, that change is not bad at all. … Millions of people around the globe are going vegetarian for the sake of animals, their health and the environment. I encourage you to give it a try too!”

Georges Laraque (1976) Canadian ice hockey player

“A Vegan Life”, in georgeslaraque.com (August 2009) https://georgeslaraque.com/vg-vegan.php.

Love, Life, People, Health

“Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else — and failing.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Raymond Radiguet, who was quoted by Cocteau in his acceptance speech to the Académie Française (October 1955)
Misattributed

“A truly great architecture grew up in Mexico after the time of the Conquest of Cortez. It was probably not on account of any lack desire on the part of the early Fathers that architecture was not transplanted to California in the days of the Missions. It is apparent their simple crude touches of ornament, that Padres were trying to simulate the richness of the churches of Mexico City and Puebla—they were pitifully limited, however, not only in wealth but also in the skill of the workmen had at hand.”

Clarence Stein (1882–1975) American architect

A Triumph of Spanish Colonial Style (1916)

Time, Parting, Wealth

“Don't try to sell me on death, Odysseus.
I'd rather be a hired hand back up on earth,
Slaving away for some poor dirt farmer,
Than lord it over all these withered dead.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Book XI, lines 510–513; spoken by the ghost of Achilles.
Translations, Odyssey (2000)

Death, Dead

“Who are they to try me? They should be tried first. [They are] people who are rejecting the United Nations resolutions, who are rejecting the Hague Court resolution, who are rejecting the world public opinion, who have no respect for any internation law, and who are massacring people, executing people, just imprisoning thousands and thousands and thousands without any reasons. Who is going to try them?”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

David Frost (January 1980), The Shah Speaks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKUQUDf5IBo&feature=related (video) Interviews

People, World, Law

“Our situations are arranged by higher agents to allow us to become tired of trying to manipulate the material energy. Due to not being properly appreciative of the beauty of relationship with the Lord, humankind is given a temporary arena in which to act out our desires. This environment is designed to frustrate, disgust, and disappoint us, to make us contemplative and introspective. Ultimately it is meant to drive us away from the temporary world in favor of that which is eternal. This is arranged for us to finally realize that our happiness lies not in dabbling with the material energy but in serving the Lord unconditionally, thus becoming whole again.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 4: Fire and Brimstone, Horns and Tail, p. 66

Happiness, World, Beauty, Disappointment

“The Government's policies of controlling local authority spending, cutting National Health spending and promoting private medicine and care for the elderly are a return to the workhouse. The only difference is that it is a capitalist workhouse rather than a discreet workhouse stuck away in the hills outside the town…Care for the elderly is an important issue. It cannot be left to volunteers, charities or to people going out with collecting boxes to see that old people are looked after properly. The issue is central to our demands for a caring society. That means an end to the cuts and an end to the policy of attacking those authorities that try to care for the elderly. Instead, there should be support for and recognition of those demands. Elderly people deserve a little more than pats on the head from Conservative Members. They deserve more than the platitudinous nonsense talked about handing the meals on wheels service over to the WRVS or any other volunteer who cares to run it. Instead, there should be a recognition that those who have worked all their lives to create and provide the wealth that the rest of us enjoy deserve some dignity in retirement. They do not deserve poverty, or to be ignored in their retirement, having to live worrying whether to put on the gas fire, or boil the kettle for a cup of tea, or whether they can afford a television licence or a trip out. They should not have to wonder whether the home help who has looked after them so long will be able to continue. The issue is crucial. The motion says clearly that care for the elderly comes before the promotion of policies that merely increase the wealth of those who are already the wealthiest in our society.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/feb/22/care-of-the-elderly in the House of Commons (22 February 1984). 1980s

People, Health, Home, Support

“The tame, the domesticated, try to monopolize the word freedom; they'd like to apply it to their own condition. They apply the word "wild" to the free.”

Fredy Perlman book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan

Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! (1983)

Freedom

“I do not care about home runs. The pitch is always away from me and it is foolish to try to pull this pitch for a home run. The pitcher does not wish it so, and I don't try. I am not foolish. Only in Philadelphia I think maybe I will try for the home run, but I do not think so even in L. A. I make the hits which the pitcher cannot stop, and that is better than striking out and will drive out the pitcher, too.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted by Les Biederman—who, not coincidentally, notes both Clemente's successful suppression of "the home run urge" and his ability to "hit for distance with the best" (the former earning the "unqualified praise of George Sisler")—in The Sporting News (June 1, 1960), p. 7
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>

Home, Thinking

“It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and whats happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there — with your eyes open — and lived to see it.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Love, Happiness, Way, Reality

“Every truthful work of art must express a definite feeling, must move the spirit of the spectator either to joy or to sadness.... rather than try to unite all sensations, as thought mixed together with a twirling stick.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote in: 'Caspar David Friedrich's Medieval Burials', Karl Whittington - http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring12/whittington-on-caspar-david-friedrichs-medieval-burials undated

Truth, Sadness, Art, Feeling

“One thing most of us agree on is that the universe exists (people who deny that usually follow some trade other than science), so if some theoretical particle interaction would lead ultimately to the nonexistence of the universe, then you can save a lot of electricity by not trying to demonstrate it.”

Joe Haldeman book Forever Peace

Source: Forever Peace (1997), p. 25

People, Universe, Science

“I think being ‘alternative,’ which most people think holds me back, actually helps [in the music industry]. If I'd been an ordinary singer, I'd still be trying to get noticed in Canada. I'm an alternative in every way. I'm a country singer who's a vegetarian for health reasons and because of compassion for animals. I'm also alternative because of Canada — there's something romantic about being Canadian. I always push the fact that I'm Canadian. I'm not self-righteous enough to think I'm unique and I'm not being overly rebellious. But I've learned that to go your own way and be yourself, which is what I'm trying to do, is alternative to a lot of people.”

K.d. lang (1961) Canadian singer-songwriter

In 1988, upon becoming Miss Chatelaine (Chatelaine magazine's woman of the year); as quoted in Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995 by Michael Barclay, Ian A.D. Jack, Jason Schneider (Toronto: ECW Press, 2011 ebook edition), p. 539 https://books.google.it/books?id=xLIiOE_jCpAC&pg=PT539.

People, Health, Music, Way

“Proceeding on the assumption that the reader of this preface is interested in the development of my musical talent, I will try to explain, as concisely as I can, how, in this respect, my personal wheels go round. To begin with, I have only had two music lessons in my life. These were the first steps of what was to have been a full course at the Guildhall School of Music, and they faltered and stopped when I was told by my instructor that I could not use consecutive fifths. He went on to explain that a gentleman called Ebenezer Prout had announced many years ago that consecutive fifths were wrong and must in no circumstances be employed. At that time Ebenezer Prout was merely a name to me (as a matter of fact he still is, and a very funny one at that) and I was unimpressed by his Victorian dicta. I argued back that Debussy and Ravel had used consecutive fifths like mad. My instructor waved aside this triviality with a pudgy hand, and I left his presence forever with the parting shot that what was good enough for Debussy and Ravel was good enough for me. This outburst of rugged individualism deprived me of much valuable knowledge, and I have never deeply regretted it for a moment.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Preface, The Noël Coward Song Book, pp. 12–13.

Life, School, Music, Knowledge

“The reality is that we're all in the wilderness, and we have to survive on our own, and things constantly change and if we don't accept that, then we're just trying to fool ourselves. But the beauty of wilderness is that sometimes you can wake up in the morning and feel so sweet and whole.”

Sophie B. Hawkins (1967) American musician

Quotations from SophieBHawkins.com

Beauty, Fools, Feeling, Reality

“For hundreds of years the Bible was the standard, and whenever anything was asserted in any science contrary to-the Bible, the church immediately denounced the scientist. I admit the standard has been changed, and ministers are very busy, not trying to show that science does not agree with the Bible, but that the Bible agrees with science.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Business, Science, Change

“Ron Paul: …you have to develop the transition, and eventually the next step would be to prohibit the Fed from monetizing debt. This is the real evil. The politicians spend for war, welfare, and they don't have to do it responsibly.
Question: When you say monetize the debt, you mean they would only be able to spend the cash that they had on hand. They couldn't write any cheques for which they don't have in their account any money?
Ron Paul: That's right. And that is the key to it. Because when the Fed comes along, and there's starvation for capital and liquidity, and politicians are spending too much, the Fed can create 20, 30, 50 billion dollars in a day, just like they did trying to bail out this housing bubble crash. So they create money out of thin air endlessly, eventually that has to stop because that drives the value of the dollar down.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Fox Business Network, October 16, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXfDHXpP87o 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, War, Question, Evil

“Others may doubt us. They may criticize us. They may try to deny us what is rightfully ours. But they will fail. And I promise you, as long as I am mayor, I will never back away from fighting any opponent -- or confronting any obstacle -- that would prevent our people from achieving all of their dreams in Our New York.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.gothamgazette.com/searchlight/2004.state.of.city.bloomberg.shtml
Why He Was Elected Mayor

People, Dreams, Fight

“Everything in nature lives according to some order so it seems unlikely that humans live outside this system, even if they try to resist their instincts. That's how we can be sure we're not animals, this refusal to abide by what we know is good for us. If an animal's instinct tells him to avoid something he has no trouble keeping a wide berth. We, on the other hand, run in the direction of danger if it offers a thrill or satisfies a curiosity.”

Chrissie Hynde (1951) Rock singer-songwriter and founder of Pretenders

Reckless (2015)

Nature, Animals

“And he won’t follow. These lines he’s drawn for him and he don’t want to try. Seeing is believing Lord knows what he sees here every night. ~ "Murray"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Night

“In your [ composer Schönberg's ] works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions, is exactly what I am trying to find in my painting.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

in his letter to Arnold Schönberg, 18 Jan. 1911; as cited in Schonberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 9
Kandinsky visited a concert with music of Schönberg on 11 Jan. 1911 with Franz Marc, Alexej von Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter and others; they played compositions, Schönberg wrote in 1907 and 1909: his second string quartet and the 'Three piano pieces'
1910 - 1915

Life, Music, Painting

“But this instinctive falsification of the world view is only of limited effectiveness. Again and again the ressentiment man encounters happiness, power, beauty, wit, goodness, and other phenomena of positive life. They exist and impose themselves, however much he may shake his fist against them and try to explain them away. He cannot escape the tormenting conflict between desire and impotence. Averting his eyes is sometimes impossible and in the long run ineffective. When such a quality irresistibly forces itself upon his attention, the very sight suffices to produce an impulse of hatred against its bearer, who has never harmed or insulted him. Dwarfs and cripples, who already feel humiliated by the outward appearance of the others, often show this peculiar hatred—this hyena-like and ever-ready ferocity. Precisely because this kind of hostility is not caused by the “enemy's” actions and behavior, it is deeper and more irreconcilable than any other. It is not directed against transitory attributes, but against the other person's very essence and being. Goethe has this type of “enemy” in mind when he writes: “Why complain about enemies?—Could those become your friends—To whom your very existence—Is an eternal silent reproach?” (West-Eastern Divan). The very existence of this “being,” his mere appearance, becomes a silent, unadmitted “reproach.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Other disputes can be settled, but not this! Goethe knew, for his rich and great existence was the ideal target of ressentiment. His very appearance was bound to make the poison flow.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Hostility, Happiness, World

“So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life — real life, I mean — that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a new-born babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

the first lines in 'Manifesto du Surréalisme', Andre Breton, 1924
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Life, Women, Way, Feeling

“My girl has gone, and said goodbye.
Don't you cry, hold your head up high.
Don't give up, give love one more try,
'Cause there's a right girl for every guy.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

My Girl Has Gone, written by Smokey Robinson, Ronald White, Pete Moore, and Marvin Tarplin (1965)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Love, Guy, Girl, Cry

Quotes about try page 45

Quotes about try
page 45