Quotes about turn
page 31

“She said that's that.
I don't wanna chitter-chat.
Turn it down a little bit
or turn it down flat.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.
Pump it up until you can feel it.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Pump It Up
Song lyrics, This Year's Model (1978)

Feeling

“What is essential is that nothing should inhibit individuals from applying to others for information and advice, or for additional effort. This in turn depends on the ability to suppress differences of status and of technical prestige on occasions of working interaction, and on the absence of barriers to communication founded on functional preserves, privilege, or personal reserve.”

Tom Burns (1913–2001) British sociologist

The Management of Innovation, 1961

Communication, Effort, Dependency, Personality

“On December 16th, 1961 the world turned upside down and inside out, and I was born screaming at America. It was the tail end of the American Dream. Just before we lost our innocence irrevocably when the TV eye brought the horror of our lives into our homes for all to see. I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted a fireman, a policeman, a doctor, even president it seemed, and for the first time in the history of mankind something new called an astronaut. But like many kids growing up on a steady diet of westerns I always wanted to be the cowboy hero that lone voice in the wilderness fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth, and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go in my never ending ride into the setting sun.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Revelations (1993)

Truth, World, Justice, Dreams

“I’ve known Donald (Trump) for a few decades, and what you can say without argument is that he’s a good father. His kids have turned out really well. There’s nothing bad you can say about that.”

Gene Simmons (1949) Israeli-born American rock bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, and actor

Interview with Radio.com (July 6, 2016)

“Government by three men in a room has turned New York State into a national symbol of governmental dysfunction. Enough is enough!”

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

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/searchlight/20070117/203/2080
Election Reform

Men

“As the people here grow colder I turn to my computer
And spend my evenings with it
Like a friend.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

People

“Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave.
Turning the tide, you know you are nobody's slave.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Shaking the Tree
Song lyrics, Shaking the Tree (1990)

“Towards this fine honor of a trade converged all the finest, all the most noble sentiments—dignity, pride. Never ask anything of anyone, they used to say. … In those days a workman did not know what it was to solicit. It is the bourgeoisie who, turning the workmen into bourgeois, have taught them to solicit.”

Charles Péguy (1873–1914) French poet, essayist, and editor

Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 83.

“We discovered at one point that the brick wall of the pillar would hold up a sock pretty well. This led to sorting socks by putting them on the wall, which in turn led to mosaics built entirely of socks. Mission drift is a hazard in all pursuits, including doing the laundry.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[d6qu65$cm6$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

“If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by “failure is the mother of success” and “a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Practice (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 人们要想得到工作的胜利即得到预想的结果，一定要使自己的思想合于客观外界的规律性，如果不合，就会在实践中失败。人们经过失败之后，也就从失败取得教训，改正自己的思想使之适合于外界的规律性，人们就能变失败为胜利，所谓“失败者成功之母”，“吃一堑长一智”，就是这个道理。

World, Law, Idea, Failure

“I had a lot of changes in my life since I turned 40. In fact, even since I turned 50. I became a vegetarian. I have never felt better in my life. I have more energy, I'm so much more alert. I lost 20 pounds, that's right! I really really recommend going vegetarian whatever time in your life. Peace begins on your plate. I'm Carol Leifer and I'm a vegan.”

Carol Leifer (1956) American actor and comedian

“Carol Leifer: Vegetarian Testimonial (Life After 40),” ad for PETA (13 July 2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkucyjXacU4.

Life, Peace, Change, Time

“Fate is mightier than genius. Caesar desired to become the restorer of the civil commonwealth, and became the founder of the new military monarchy which he abhorred; he overthrew the regime of aristocrats and banks in the state, only to put a military regime in their place, and the commonwealth continued as before to be tyrannized and turned to profit by a privileged minority. And yet it is a privilege of the highest natures thus creatively to err. The brilliant attempts of great men to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim, form the best treasures of nations.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, pt. 2. translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Men, Fate, Nature

“When she turned blue, all the angels screamed.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

" Run Run Run"
Lyrics

Angels

“And the other thing is that it causes one to engage ultimately in activities that are merely used to get attention. Criminologists tell us that some people are driven to crime because of this drum major instinct. They don't feel that they are getting enough attention through the normal channels of social behavior, and so they turn to anti-social behavior in order to get attention, in order to feel important. And so they get that gun, and before they know it they robbed a bank in a quest for recognition, in a quest for importance.”

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

1960s, The Drum Major Instinct (1968)

People, Behavior, Feeling

“we have heard as yet only the proceedings of the first day of Burr’s trial, which from the favor of the Marshal and judge promises him all which can depend on them. A grand jury of two federalists, four (Tertium) Quids and ten republicans does not seem to be a fair representation of the state of Virginia. But all this will shew the original error of establishing a judiciary independant of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law can turn it’s guns on those they were meant to defend, and controul and fashion their proceedings to it’s own will. I have always entertained a high opinion of the Marshal’s integrity and political correctness. But, in a state where there are not more than eight Quids, how five of them should have been summoned on one jury is difficult to explain from accident.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John W. Eppes (28 May 1807) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5646 1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Law, Error, Fashion, Dependency

“There is another objection to the Suffern's or Pompton position, which is, the advantage it gives the enemy of dividing our attention, by taking post at King's Ferry. It will be impossible for us to deter mine which is their object, the camp or West Point; and it will be almost as dangerous to expose our camp as these garrisons, especially early in the spring, when we have all our baggage about us, and no possibility of moving it off. If we take a position near Morris, we can always tell, by the motions of the enemy, what is their object; and, having our camp in a secure situation, should they turn their force to wards this place, we can march to its relief in such force as to give certain support, and at the same time leave our camp in perfect security.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Spring, Support, Time, Perfection

“Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” when the saying should have been, “Where there’s scandalous lies there’s always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 17.

Stupidity

“David Blunkett and I both take the same view that it is scandalous that someone from North Tyneside, Laura Spence, with the best qualifications and who wants to be a doctor, should be turned down by Oxford University using an interview system more reminiscent of the old school network and the old school tie than justice. It is about time for an end to that old Britain where what matters more are the privileges you are born with, rather than the potential you actually have.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Alexandra Frean, John O'Leary, Philip Webster, "Brown goes to war over Oxford elite", The Times, 26 May 2000, p. 1.
Speech at a Trade Union Congress meeting, 25 May 2000.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

School, Justice, Universe, Time

“I hope and believe cultural history will make progress if it also fixes its attention firmly on the individual human being. Movements, as distinct from periods, are started by people. Some of them are abortive, others catch on. Each movement in its turn has a core of dedicated souls, a crowd of hangers-on, not to forget a lunatic fringe. There is a whole spectrum of attitudes and degrees of conversion. Even within the individual there may be various levels of conviction, various conscious and unconscious fluctuations in loyalty. What seemed acceptable during the mass rally or revivalist meeting may look pretty crazy on the way home. But movements would not be movements if they did not have their badges, their outward signs, their style of behaviour, style of speech and of dress. Who can probe the motives which prompt individuals to adopt some of these, and who would venture in every case to pronounce on the completeness of the conversion this adoption may express? Knowing these limitations, the cultural historian will be a little wary of the claims of cultural psychology.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

People, Hope, Way, Home

“Epimenides was sent by his father into the field to look for a sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave and fell asleep, and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when awake, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short nap.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Epimenides, 2.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Thinking

“No religious position is loyally served by refusing to consider annoying theories which may well turn out to be facts.”

Norman Lamm (1927) American rabbi

Seventy faces: articles of faith (2002)

“American literature offers scarcely one working model for high education. The student must go back, beyond Jean Jacques, to Benjamin Franklin, to find a model even of self-teaching. Except in the abandoned sphere of the dead languages, no one has discussed what part of education has, in his personal experience, turned out to be useful, and what not. This volume attempts to discuss it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, Literature, Parting, Personality

“We talk endlessly of the individual and of individualism, for example, when any sensible glance at major issues indicates that we live in an era of great conformism. Our societies turn upon democratic principles, yet the quasi totality of our leading citizens refuse to take part in that process and, instead, leave the exercise of political power to those for whom they have contempt. Our business leaders hector us in the name of capitalism, when most of them are no more than corporate employees, isolated from personal risk.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Exercises, Business, Parting, Personality

“However often we turn to it [the Qur'an] at first disgusting us each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence… Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible — ever and anon truly sublime — Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in Dictionary of Islam (1895), by T.P. Hughes, p. 526

Books, Age, Exercises, Time

“Overhead, capricious spring clouds began to scud across the sky in mackerel shapes, promising more rain. Garraty turned up his collar and listened to the sound of his feet pounding the pavement. There was a trick to that, a subtle mental adjustment, like having better night vision the longer you were in the dark. This morning the sound of his feet had been lost to him. They had been lost in the tramp of ninety-nine other pairs, not to mention the rumble of the halftrack. But now he heard them easily. His own particular stride, and the way his left foot scraped the pavement every now and then. It seemed to him that the sound of his footfalls had become as loud to his ears as the sound of his own heartbeat. Vital, life and death sound.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Life, Death, Way, Spring

“The panic on the part of the State and Union governments could not but produce some more unsavoury results. Muslim mobs in India and elsewhere had been incited by all those who mattered in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They started taking to the streets and turning violent. The Statesman dated May 13 published the following news date-lined Dhaka, May 12: “At least 12 people were killed and 100 wounded when Bangladesh police fired on a demonstration yesterday in the border town of Chepal Nawabgunj, 320 km. from here. Some 1000 demonstrators, belonging to the fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami, were protesting against a case filed by two Indian civilians in Calcutta High Court calling for a ban on the Quran in India. The town chief administrator said today that the police opened fire in self-defence when the demonstrators went on a rampage throwing missiles and setting ablaze government property. Yesterday’s incident followed a demonstration by at least 20,000 Jamaat-i-Islami supporters in the capital on Friday {May 10}.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The demonstrators in Dhaka, according to other reports, were trying to storm the office of India’s High Commission when they were stopped by the police.
The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

People, Support, Parting

“Roll a ball under your hand on a table and roll a pencil in the same manner. What you feel are "point" and "line" bearings. But to understand what mechanics mean by a surface "bearing," grasp a pencil in your hand and use your other hand to make it turn as a piece of shafting. Now, the lower half of the shaft is supported everywhere by contact with your hand — the upper half is not supported, merely covered. The advantages of ball and roller bearings were obvious many years ago to mechanical people… Solid steel rollers, being inflexible, were not satisfactory at that stage, but a Hyatt flexible roller bearing was different. We had something. Our spirally wound tube roller had a springlike quality, yielded to irregularities caused by poor manufacture, thus making automatic adjustments between housing and bearing.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 13-14, as cited in: William Pelfrey (2006), Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, a Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History. p. 30-31; Sloan describing the Hyatt roller bearing product;

People, Feeling, Understanding, Support

“She ain't into wine and roses
Beer just makes her turn up her nose and
She can't stand the thought of sipping champagne
No Cuervo gold margaritas
Just ain't enough good burn in tequila
She needs somethin' with a little more edge
And a little more pain
She's my little whiskey girl, she's my little whiskey girl
My ragged on the edges girl, ah but I like em rough.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Whiskey Girl, written with Scotty Emerick.
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Pain, Girl, Beer, Wine

“It has never been my nature, I regret to admit to the House, to turn the other cheek.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/dec/18/the-economy in the House of Commons (18 December 1974) 1970s

Nature, Housing

“It amazes me that anyone would dare point to Jesus Christ in moral judgement. You had better have clean hands and a pure heart before you point a finger at the Son of God… Jesus never sinned once, in thought, word, or in deed. He never lied, stole, hated, lusted, coveted, murdered, or dishonoured his parents. Let's now turn the mirror back on you. When was the last time you burned with unlawfully sexual fantasies? You don't need to reply to that. God knows the answer… So take a little advice from a fellow sinner - stop pointing your sin-stained finger at perfection, and instead look at your own self-righteous and duplicitous heart, before it's too late.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

God, Hate, Parent, Time

“I trust you like a brother. Until the day you betray me. You have a parole for what you’ve done, in return for your teaching, and a better bargain than you deserve, but the day you turn against me, I will tear it up and bury it with you.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Rand al'Thor to Asmodean
(15 October 1993)

Tear

“In the final weeks of my seminary days, shortly after Dr. King's death, I found myself becoming consumed by feelings of animosity and anger. I was disenchanted with my church and my country. I was tired of being in the minority, and I was tired of turning the other cheek. I, along with many blacks, found ways to protest and try to change the treatment we received in this country. Perhaps my passion for Richard Wright novels was affecting me. Perhaps it was listening too intently to Nina Simone. Perhaps, like Bigger Thomas, I was being consumed by the circumstances in which I found myself, circumstances that I saw as responding only to race.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Death, Way, Feeling, Passion

“Big Dams are to a nation's 'development' what nuclear bombs are to its military arsenal. They're both weapons of mass destruction. They're both weapons governments use to control their own people. Both twentieth-century emblems that mark a point in time when human intelligence has outstripped its own instinct for survival. They're both malignant indications of a civilization turning upon itself. They represent the severing of the link, not just the link -- the understanding-- between human beings and the planet they live on. They scramble the intelligence that connects eggs to hens, milk to cows, food to forests, water to rivers, air to life, and the earth to human existence.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

The Greater Common Good May, 1999 http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html. Articles

Life, People, Food, Intelligence

“I don't know much about the score for GODZILLA 1985. However, my impression of GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE is a negative one, both in terms of the direction and the music. For example, the music that is heard while the scenes that take place in Saradia are shown is just ridiculous. The composer used European music instead of some modern Arabic music. By the way, during the production of GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE, Toho asked for permission to use some of my music in the film. I said that I would allow its use as long as it was not turned into popular music. Toho agreed to that, but just before GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was completed, a Toho representative came to me and said, "Well, your music was turned into popular music." By that time, it was too late to do anything about the situation. After GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE was released, my daughter came to me and said, "No matter how much you try to escape from Godzilla movies, Toho always uses your name and your melodies, so why don't you just score the next Godzilla film yourself?"”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

That is why I agreed to work on GODZILLA VS. GHIDRAH. As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Music, Way, Time, Daughters

“Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Demea to Philo, Part X
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Life, Pleasure, World, Disease

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Life, Money, God, War

“But what if it turns out, as it just possibly might, that William Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of the plays ascribed to him? There is a theory, advanced by reputable scholars, seriously and, in my opinion, plausibly, that Shakespeare merely lent his name as a cover for the literary activities of another person, perhaps the Earl of Oxford. If, by some terrible chance, this theory should be proved, then straightway Stratford's tourist business would dwindle. It would become just one more, and honestly not one in the first ten, of England's picturesque small towns.”

Tyrone Guthrie (1900–1971) English actor and director

New York Times Magazine. The New York Times. pp. 12, 60–61.

Business, Chance, Personality

“This evening, he planned to make Sharpe drunk. He planned to force the grief out into the open and he would do it as the Irish knew how to do it, with a wake. […] A wake, a decent, drunken, laughing wake. Hogan had ordered Harry Price to attend and he would force Sharpe to drink, to talk, to remember Teresa, and in the morning the grief would already be turning into healthy regret.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Major Michael Hogan, p. 344
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)

Drink

“…As time passed I began to play a game with water's secret powers; I surrendered my so-called free consciousness and allowed the water to take possession of it for a while. Little by little this game turned into a profoundly earnest endeavour, because I realised that one could detach one's own consciousness from the body and attach it to that of the water. When my own consciousness was eventually returned to me, then the water's most deeply concealed psyche often revealed the most extraordinary things to me. As a result of this investigation, a researcher was born who could dispatch his consciousness on a voyage of discovery, as it were. In this way I was able to experience things that had escaped other people's notice, because they were unaware that a human being is able to send forth his free consciousness into those places the eyes cannot see. By practising this blindfolded vision, I eventually developed a bond with mysterious Nature, whose essential being I then slowly learnt to perceive and understand…”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Callum Coats: Living Energies - Viktor Schauberger's brilliant work with Natural Energies Explained (2002)

People, Secret, Way, Game

“Cumulative errors depend largely on the big surprises, the big opportunities. Not only do economic, financial, and political predictors miss them, but they are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients — and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 149

Error, Dependency

“Nearby…. are monsters personifying Pestilence and Famine, those inseparable partners of War. On the ground, turning her back, lies a woman with a broken lute representing Harmony… [T]here is also a mother with a child in her arms indicating that fecundity, procreation and charity are thwarted by War, which corrupts and destroys everything.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

Rubens is describing his painting 'The Horrors of War' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Rubens_-_The_Consequences_of_War.jpg 1637 In a letter to Justus Sustermans, c. 1637 (Rubens' agent at the Medici court in Florence); as quoted in Rembrandts Eyes', by w:Simon Schrama, Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York 1999, p. 180 Simon Schrama describes: The blue skies in the painting are overwhelmed by smoky darkness.. ..despite support from the usual team of putti and her own spectacularly opulent charms, Venus is losing the battle for Mars's attentions to the Fury Alecto 1625 - 1640

War

“Down there it's still Summer, I suppose, whereas our sun [in Switzerland] is already gilding the mountains and the larches are turning yellow, but the colours are wonderful, like old, dark red satin. Down here in the valley the huts stand out in the strongest Paris blue against the yellow fields. Here one really learns the values of the individual colours for the first time. And the harsh, monumental lines of the mountains.”

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

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 13 October 1918; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 223-224
1916 - 1919

Mountain, Learning, Time, Sun

“Although I am not as strict a vegetarian as I once was, I do continue to choose to eat more like a vegetarian than not. I would call myself a "conscious eater". It all started with my desire to be as lean and healthy as possible as a teenager around 17-years-old. With more education, as well as trial and error, it also turned into an expression of my attempt to show compassion for all living things.”

Charlene Wong (1966) Canadian figure skater

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

Education, Error

“I have all my life been an indweller of the town, and I frankly confess, for a constant residence, I like it better than all the pastoral charms that ever made the morality of an essay, or gave grace to poetry; still there is that about the country to which the heart always turns with a feeling of freshness and renovation. The moonlight walk through the green wood, would come back upon the memory with a spell which would not belong to a lamp-lighted ramble. The green-leaf would give its freshness, the wild-flower its sweetness; on the ear would arise the murmur of the wind in the boughs — or the song of the brook singing like a child for very gladness.”

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

Literary Remains

Life, Feeling, Flowers, Light

“The Wheel of Time and the wheel of a man's life turn alike without pity or mercy.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1994)

Life, Time

“He was wrong, as all are who rouse the passive resistance of a woman's nature. The indignity and violence with which she was treated only made her turn more fondly to the shelter of the loving heart she believed was so truly her own. Kindness might have brought her to her father's feet, ready to give up her dearest hopes for his sake; but his harsh anger only made her tremble at the hopeless future.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Hope, Nature, Future

“The nineteenth century will colonize; so, in its fantasies, did the nineteenth century soul. When Emma [Bovary] turns spendthrift and buys curtains, carpets and hangings from the draper, the information takes on something from the theme of the novel itself: the material is a symbol of the exotic, and the exotic feeds the Romantic appetite. It will lead to satiety, bankruptcy and eventually to nihilism and the final drive towards death and nothingness.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Gustave Flaubert: The Quotidian", p. 130
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

Death, Soul

“Many Christians deny what faith means, at least initially. Some try to equivocate. Some resort to the logical fallacy of false equivalence, insinuating that science depends on faith too, or that their religion has evidence. Some Christians even try to reverse the definition of faith into a belief that is based on evidence. But that’s not what it is. Faith is not simply “trust” either, as some allege. That is the wrong context. Faith in the context of religion is a form of trust, but with a prefix and suffix required to turn mere trust into faith. It must be a [complete] trust [that is not based on evidence]. This is according a consensus of mainstream authoritative religious and other definitive sources, not just within Abrahamic religions in the Bible and Qur’an, but also in other religions like the Hindu’s Bhagavad-Gita.”

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

Patheos, Philosophistry http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/04/12/philosophistry/ (April 12, 2017)

Faith, Religion, Science, Dependency

“Catilina in particular was one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history; but his very outward appearance - the pale countenance, the wild glance, the gait by turns sluggish and hurried - betrayed his dismal past. He possessed in a high degree the qualities which are required in the leader of such a band - the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of bearing all privations, courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the energy of a felon, and that horrible mastery of vice which knows how to bring the weak to fall, and how to train the fallen to crime.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Translated by W.P. Dickson
On the Praetor Lucius Catilina
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Men, Pleasure, Age, History

“Don't let your prayers turn into a wish list for Santa Claus. Worship God and praise him when you come to him in prayer.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God

“The first thing you see will be the two Cyanean Rocks, at the end of the straits. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever made his way between them, for not being fixed to the bottom of the sea they frequently collide, flinging up the water in a seething mass which falls on the rocky flanks of the straits with a resounding roar. Now if, as I take it, you are god-fearing travellers and men of sense, you will be advised by me: you will not rashly throw away your lives or rush into danger with the recklessness of youth. Make an experiment first. Send out a dove from Argo to explore the way. If she succeeds in flying in between the Rocks and out across the sea, do not hesitate to follow in her path, but get a firm grip on your oars and cleave the water of the straits. For that is the time when salvation will depend, not on your prayers, but on your strength of arm. So think of nothing else, be firm, and spend your energies on what will pay you best. By all means pray to the gods, but choose an earlier moment. And if the dove flies on, but comes to grief midway, turn back. It is always better to submit to heaven; and you could not possibly escape a dreadful end. The Rocks would crush you, even if Argo were an iron ship.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book II. Onward to Colchis, Lines 317–340

Men, God, Youth, Fear

“We have classical associations and great names of our own which we can confidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We respect the Great Charter more than the laws of Solon. The Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey…The list of warriors and statesmen by whom our constitution was founded or preserved, from De Montfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of Sydney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the bitterness of death was past.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

' History https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55901/55901-h/55901-h.htm', Edinburgh Review (May 1828)

Death, Pleasure, Law, Confidence

“Internal perception also fails as a method for scientific psychology. In the nature of the case, it must be casual and therefore unsystematic. It excludes all deliberate investigation, because as soon as it becomes aware of itself it turns into the self-observation that is open to all the well-known and valid criticisms. It is, indeed, the basis of a psychology of consciousness, in the sense that conscious processes must be perceived to be known, but for a science it is not enough.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "The history of introspection reconsidered." 1980, p. 245

Nature, Sense, Science

“The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Rolling Stone interview (2005)

God, Music

“Sri Aurobindo, for one, insisted on the radically different spirit in Sikhism as compared with Islam: 'Those ways of Indian cult which most resemble a popular form of Theism, are still something more; for they do not exclude, but admit the many aspects of God. (…) The later religious forms which most felt the impress of the Islamic idea, like Nanak's worship of the timeless One, Akla, and the reforming creeds of today, born under the influence of the West, yet draw away from the limitations of western or Semitic monotheism. Irresistibly they turn from these infantile conceptions towards the fathomless truth of Vedanta.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Sri Aurobindo: Foundations of Indian Culture, p.135
2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

God, Truth, Way, Idea

“How could we bear, nursed as we have been in a free atmosphere, to be gagged and muzzled; to have spies, eavesdroppers and delators at every corner; to have even private conversations caught up and used against us by the Secret Police and all their agents and creatures; to be arrested and interned without trial; or to be tried by political or Party courts for crimes hitherto unknown to civil law. How could we bear to be treated like schoolboys when we are grown-up men; to be turned out on parade by tens of thousands to march and cheer for this slogan or for that; to see philosophers, teachers and authors bullied and toiled to death in concentration camps; to be forced every hour to conceal the natural workings of the human intellect and the pulsations of the human heart? Why, I say that rather than submit to such oppression, there is no length we would not go to.”

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

Speech at Théâtre des Ambassadeurs, Paris (24 September 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 788
The 1930s

Death, Men, Secret, Law

“Because of smart policies, Finland is able to spend less per student than do Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the United States on all levels, with much better outcomes. The good news for America, though, is that for precisely this reason, Finland is an encouraging example for any country that is facing diminished budgets. […] One area in which Finns excel is cutting administrative costs. It turns out that Finns did not invent most of the education policies they are currently using. Americans did. Child-centered education, problem solving-based learning, educating people for democratic life—these are all ideas introduced by American thinkers. […] It doesn’t seem, then, like much of a stretch to suggest that the United States could borrow smart ideas about education from Finland.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Source: The Nordic Theory of Everything, Chapter 4

Life, People, Education, Idea

“I’ve always suspected that Judas was the most faithful of the apostles, and that his betrayal of Jesus was not a betrayal at all, simply a test to prove that Christ could not be betrayed. The way I see it, Judas hoped and expected that Christ would have worked some kind of miracle and turned away those soldiers when they came for him. Or perhaps he would not die on the cross. Or perhaps—well, never mind. In any case, Jesus didn’t do any of these things, probably because he was not capable of it. You see, I’ve also always believed that Christ was not the son of God, but just a very very good man, and that he had no supernatural powers at all, just the abilities of any normal human being. When he died, that’s when Judas realized that he had not been testing God at all—he’d been betraying a human being, perhaps the best human being. Judas’s mistake was in wanting too much to believe in the powers of Christ. He wanted Christ to demonstrate to everyone that he was the son of God, and he believed his Christ could do it—only his Christ wasn’t the son of God and couldn’t do it, and he died. You see, it was Christ who betrayed Judas—by promising what he couldn’t deliver. And Judas realized what he had done and hung himself. That’s my interpretation of it, Auberson—not the traditional, I’ll agree, but it has more meaning to me. Judas’s mistake was in believing too hard and not questioning first what he thought were facts. I don’t intend to repeat that mistake.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 37 (p. 216)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

God, Faith, Hope, Way

“Yet gazed MANDALLA on the square
As she he sought still glided there,—
Oh that fond look, whose eyeballs’ strain,
And will not know its look is vain!
At length he turned,—his silent mood
Sought that impassioned solitude,
The Eden of young hearts, when first
Love in its loneliness is nurst.”

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

The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Mood, Solitude, Heart

“The real turning point in my life came when I performed my best in Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan. After reading the script, I felt I had Umrao in me — the character influenced me so much. I put my soul into each minute aspect of my performance. I was thrilled when I won the National Award for Best Actress for Umrao Jaan.”

Rekha (1954) Indian film actress

The diva rules

Life, Soul, Reading

“A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration.”

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

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Faith, Religion, Spring, Appearance

“Americans are well aware that there has been a revolution. In morals. In manners. In speech. In crime rates. In riots. In violence. In drugs. In sex. In pornography. In politics. In movies. In education. In music. What most of us failed to realize at the moment was how important the music revolution would become. It turned out to be the catalyst for all the rest. It became the prod to promote drugs, the advertiser of sex in the hedonism manner, the mind-conditioner for four-letter gutter speech, and eventually the blatant propaganda funnel for political subversion. It also became the seductive Jezebel for a modern philosophy of no God, of Man as merely a graduate beast of the jungle, of Jesus Christ as a phoney actor--a superstar, of peace and prosperity being possible only under communism, of America as the enemy of the world, of Russia as the hope of the world.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

Preface to Rock 'N' Reality: Mirrors of Rock Music--Its Relationship to Sex, Drugs, Family and Religion (1971)

God, World, Education, Peace

“The desktop hasn't really taken over the world like Linux has in many other areas, but just looking at my own use, my desktop looks so much better than I ever could have imagined. Despite the fact that I'm known for sometimes not being very polite to some of the desktop UI people, because I want to get my work done. Pretty is not my primary thing. I actually am very happy with the Linux desktop, and I started the project for my own needs, and my needs are very much fulfilled. That's why, to me, it's not a failure. I would obviously love for Linux to take over that world too, but it turns out it's a really hard area to enter. I'm still working on it. It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25. I'll wear them down.”

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

Torvalds, Linus, 2016-04-07, <nowiki>Linus Torvalds still wants Linux to take over the desktop</nowiki>, 2016-04-07 http://www.cio.com/article/3053507/linux/linus-torvalds-still-wants-linux-to-take-over-the-desktop.html, 2010s, 2016

Love, Happiness, People, World

“As boys without bonds to their fathers grow older and more desperate about their masculinity, they are in danger of forming gangs in which they strut their masculinity for one another, often overdo it, and sometimes turn to displays of fierce, macho bravado and even violence.”

Frank Pittman (1935–2012) American psychiatrist

Source: Man Enough (1993), Ch. 5.

Boy

“Last week, i… i extended a hand to the WWE Universe in a much needed intervention. You know, i don't know if you people know this or not, but i'm not the only one who knows that pills and cigarettes and alcohol are harmful. Medical science has proven this, so there's a surgeon general put in place to put warning labels on all of these products. I guess he's just there to warn the smart people that already know, huh? This is my crusade, and i will continue my crusade for as long as there are people who need help, as long as there are people out there who need change in their lives. One person in particular i've been helping for quite some time now, i'd like to introduce him to the world. Ladies and gentlemen, i give you… Luke Gallows. (Gallows raises his fist) That's right, some of you may recognize him as "Festus", but that was a lifetime ago. And it's a lifetime that he'd just as soon regret. It's a lifetime of torturous drug abuse and neglect, you see, it started just like it started for all of you people, one, one little pill. Just one little pill to take the edge off, one painkiller. And then one turns to two, two turns to four, four turns to eight, so on and so forth. And sure, his friends, his family were there, but they enabled him. They didn't help him, they thought they were but they were slowly rotting him from the inside out. But then i helped him, just like i could help all of you. Trust me, this is just the start, this doesn't end here, it begins here and now. I will continue to reach out and help those who can't help themselves. Holds up brown paper bag On December 1st, this is scary, people, pay attention. On December 1st, a very dangerous addictive new drug hits the streets. Now this scares me because it's a socially accepted over-the-counter drug and it's gonna be widely available all over the world. And it's scary because it's more dangerous than any prescribed medication, it's more harmful than chain smoking an entire carton of unfiltered cigarettes, it is more dangerous than corroding your liver with a fifth of gin or vodka and then chasing it with your Daddy's favorite beer. (Punk pulls a Jeff Hardy DVD out of the bag) "Jeff Hardy, My Life, My Rules" And what an appropriate title, for a loser who destroyed his life and his career living by his rules. And what makes me sick to my stomach is Jeff didn't just ruin his life, he didn't just end his career. (Crowd chants Hardy) He ruined the lives of all his fans because he's planted seeds of destruction in all of the people, all of the drug addicts like yourself who actually looked up to the Charismatic Enabler like he was some sort of a prophet. Well, if you people have any brain-cells left, if there's anything left of your memory that's not burnt out, all you need to know is that the last chapter of this DVD is the most important one you need to watch because it tells the whole story. It's a cage match between myself and Jeff Hardy, where i ended Jeff's career in the WWE… FOREVER! I'm the reason he's not here! And I know how hard it is to deprogram your weak little brains from all the lies you've been fed all over the years, but you owe it to yourselves. Look yourself in the mirror, search inside yourself for that shred of self-respect that might be left, and when it comes to this, when it comes to this garbage, (Holds up DVD) just say no.”

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

November 27, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Alcohol, World

“Hitchcock was a character. In one particularly scary scene I had to sneak down a dark corridor. When I got to the end there was Mr. Hitchcock, sticking out his tongue and flapping his hands in the back of his ears. I didn't dare laugh, because the cameras were turning. But he certainly eliminated any tension I felt.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

“Turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu.”

Gerald Stanley Lee (1862–1944) Americna minister

Book IV, Chapter X.
Crowds (1913)

“As we be punished here with sorrow and penance, we shall be rewarded in heaven by the courteous love of our Lord God Almighty, who willeth that none that come there lose his travail in any degree. For He holdeth sin as sorrow and pain to His lovers, to whom He assigneth no blame, for love. The meed that we shall receive shall not be little, but it shall be high, glorious, and worshipful. And so shall shame be turned to worship and more joy.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 39

Love, God, Pain, Lovers

“Hopeless, filthy, degraded, superstitious with the craven superstition which made them the easy prey of their unscrupulous clergy and left them wholly sensual and stupid; as animals, without the animals' instinctive joy of life and fearlessness of the morrow; with no ambitions for themselves or the children who turned to curse them for having brought them into such a world; with no time to dream or love, no time for the tenderness which makes life, life indeed — they toiled for a few cruel years because they feared to die, and died because they feared to live. Such were the people Turgot was sent to redeem.”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall book The Friends of Voltaire

Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 8 : Turgot: The Statesman, p. 218

Love, Life, Children, People

“Pressure from below must therefore also confront the state in its role as organiser of space, as the power that controls urbanization, the construction of buildings and spatial planning in general. The state defends class interests while simultaneously setting itself above society as a whole, and its ability to intervene in space can and must be turned back against it, by grass-roots opposition, in the form of counter-plans and counter-projects designed to thwart strategies, plans and programmes imposed from above.”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

Henri Lefebvre (1974) The Production of Space. Translated to English in 1991 by Donald Nicholson-Smith; cited in: "Henri Lefebvre on Governance and Space" on thepolisblog.org 2012.10
Other quotes

Grass

“The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun."”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Now that's horror. Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/06/22/1408/index.html of 1408 (2007)

Way

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, it turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have been forced to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 9 (p. 300) — from the protagonist’s major speech.

Love, Hunger, Pain, Hate

“Rafe turned up looking like the glass of fashion and the mold of form.”

Hulbert Footner (1879–1944) Canadian writer

Murderer's Vanity, p. 16 (1940).

Fashion

“The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 24

Despair

“The American Revolution began with certain latent hopes that it might turn into a genuine break with the State ideal. The Declaration of Independence announced doctrines that were utterly incompatible not only with the century-old conception of the Divine Right of Kings, but also with the Divine Right of the State. … If revolution is justifiable a State may even be criminal sometimes in resisting its own extinction.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

¶9. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 30–31. "The State" (1918), II

Hope

“Thus the Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Age, Time

“These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Men, Faith, Hope, Feeling

“To go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I’ll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

Thinking, Distant, Time

“It was dark. Something had fallen on top of the cabin light, turning the cabin into a black tunnel. I couldn’t hear anything at all. The roll didn’t stop. It continued to port, and for just a few seconds I was sitting on the ceiling in the dark.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 155

Light

“Something I was not aware had happened suddenly turned out not to have happened.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Joe Joseph, "Elementary lessons in logic for enquiry's bemused counsel", The Times, 18 January 1994.
Evidence to the Scott Inquiry, 17 January 1994. Major was speaking of his time as Foreign Secretary in 1989 when the guidelines for arms exports to Iraq had been relaxed, although he had not been told. At one point, when the decision to relax the guidelines was criticised, it was decided to defend the Government by claiming that the guidelines were changed only in wording and unchanged in effect.
1990s, 1994

“All the energy that you spend, trying to hurt somebody else, that energy will turn around and slap you in the face. The same thing is true, Love, what I know is that the energy that put out everyday with the best of intentions that it would reach you where you really live in heart of yourself has come back to me from all of you in full force. So that what we've learnt on this show; You are responsible for your life and when you get that, everything changes, my friends. So don't wait for somebody else to fix you, to save you or complete you…”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

"Oprah Winfrey Show Finale" in CBS (25 May 2011)

Love, Life, Change, Waiting

“There’s an editor for you.
They’re all the same. At first they’re all honey and sweet talk, with those long alcoholic lunches and blue-sky conversation about million-copy printings while they wheedle you into signing the contract. Then they turn nasty. They want the actual book delivered. When they don’t get it, or when the censors say they can’t print it, then there isn’t any more sweet talk and all the conversation is about how the aediles will escort you to debtors’ prison.”

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

Waiting for the Olympians (p. 257)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

Alcohol, Books

“What, exactly, is the cost of this inaction? Estimates of the total national cost of medical malpractice range from $20 billion to $45 billion annually. But this number hardly tells the whole story. There also is the more hidden cost of defensive medicine, including unnecessary testing and second opinions that send patients scurrying through processes that would not otherwise be ordered and deepen the financial burden of America’s health care system by an estimated three percent of our country’s total health care expenditures. Who ultimately pays these costs? Reckless doctors? Faceless insurance companies? Seldom mentioned, the totality of these expenses ultimately falls exclusively on the consumer, since each malpractice award translates ultimately to increased malpractice insurance premiums, which, in turn, translates to either higher health care costs, fewer physicians (with less competitive pricing pressure), or both.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Malpractice: Where Will It End?" Orthopedic Technology Review, September/October 2003, by Michael Johns: Advocating Statutory Constraints on Medical Malpractice

Health, Country

“Sin is the insurrection and rebellion of the heart against God; it turns from Him, and turns against Him; it takes up arms against God.”

Richard Alleine (1611–1681) English clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 546.

God, Heart

“Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams—a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told—sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. … This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 77-78

Dreams, Freedom

“If Trump turns out to be the answer, I'm incredibly proud that Jeb Bush did not want to be any part of the vile question.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard 2010s

Question, Parting

“You can be told 20 days in (a) row that you should be raped and sodomised and beaten and strung up and thrown out and taught a lesson, but if on the 21st day you turn around and make a joke about firing men into the sun using a cannon, you are a scold who hates men and is teaching her son that he's a rapist.”

Clementine Ford (writer) (1981) Australian feminist writer, broadcaster and public speaker

Clementine Ford: This is the personal price I pay for speaking out online http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/clementine-ford-this-is-the-personal-price-i-pay-for-speaking-out-online-20170713-gxaa6z.html, July 13 2017, in the Sydney Morning Herald 2017

Men, Hate, Sun

“In the early days of modern computing - the 40s, 50s and 60s - computing was a priesthood. Only a few were allowed to commune directly with the machine; all others would give their punched card offerings to the anointed, who would in turn genuflect before their card readers and perform their rituals amid the flashing of lights, the clicking of relays, and the whirring of fans and motors. If the offering was well-received, the anointed would call the communicants forward and in solemn silence hand them printed manuscripts, whose signs and symbols would be studied with fevered brow.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Grady Booch (2011) " The Computing Priesthood https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gradybooch/entry/the_computing_priesthood?lang=en" on ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gradybooch. November 14, 2011

Communication, Study, Light, Silence

“… more recently, in late September 2001, and during an acrimonious argument which erupted in a weekly Israeli cabinet meeting between Prime Minister [Ariel Sharon] and his Foreign Minister [Shimon Peres], the following interchange unfolded: Peres was warning Sharon that refusing to heed American requests for a ceasefire would endanger Israeli interests and "turn the U. S. against us." Sharon yelled at Peres in exasperation: "every time we do something you tell me the Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clearly, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America and the Americans know it." This major ideological convergence between anti-Semites and Jewish supremacists in Israel is hardly surprising if one understood Zionism's project as nothing short of turning the Jew into the anti-Semite.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in the journal New Politics, Winter 2002, Vol. VIII, Iss. 4, pg. 89.
On Ariel Sharon

People, Time

“I know what turns me on, and it's that fine line, that point where you're falling off the edge of a cliff, where your stomach turns, [and] I'm always trying to find that point in music. You rarely hit it, and again, that's the joy of playing live, because there you can be just at that point where you've lost balance. I'm always walking between polarities, trying to find the opposing sides.”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On creative aspirations, Drowned in Sound http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4562-i-want-to-have-a-past (2002)

Music, Joy

“The Hiss Case has turned my wife and me into old people - not a disagreeable condition. But we who used to plan in terms of decades, now find a year, two years, the utmost span of time we can take in.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 798

People, Time

“The history of Arab Jews who were abducted into the Zionist project late in the game is in turn irrelevant to the curricula of Israeli schools, wherein only the history of white European Jews is taught as the relevant history of all Jews.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, on the refugees of the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, in "Curriculum reform should start in the U.S. and Israel," Al-Ahram, 2003
On Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries

School, History, Game

“In this year, that is AH 412, Sultan Mahmud learnt that the people of Hindustan had turned against the Raja of Qanauj' Nand, the Raja of Kalinjar attacked Qanauj because Raja Kuwar (of Qanauj) had surrendered to Sultan Mahmud. As a result of this attack Raja Kuwar was killed. When Sultn Mahmud learnt it, he collected a large army and started towards Hindustam with a view to take revenge upon Raja Nanda. As the army of Musalmams reached the Jumna, the son of Raja Anand Pal stood in the way of Mahmud. The river of Jumna was in spate at this time and it became very difficult for the army to get across. But as chance would have it, eight royal guards of Mahmud showed courage and crossed the river they attacked the army of the Hindis and dispersed it, the son of anand Pal ran away with his chiefs. All the eight royal guards entered a city nearby and they plundered it to their heart's content. They demolished the temples in that place.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, by Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Firishta, Translated from the Urdu version of Tarikh-i-Firishta by Abdul Hai Khwajah, Deoband, 1983, pt. I, p. 125. In Goel S.R. Hindu temples What Happened to them
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

People, Way, Courage, Revenge