Quotes about turning (6191 quotes, page 24)

“Lambert, who admired Duke Ellington and proclaimed his harmonic roots in Frederick Delius (who in his turn had taken them from Debussy), was a fearless reconciler of what the academies and Tin Pan Alley alike presumed to be eternally opposed…In 1972, on a plane from New York to Toronto, I found myself sitting next to Duke Ellington, who spoke almost with tears in his eyes of the stature of Lambert.”

Constant Lambert (1905–1951) British composer and conductor

Anthony Burgess Little Wilson and Big God ([1987] 1988) pp. 110-11.
Criticism

Tear

“I hope the fact-checkers are turning up the volume and really working hard. Donald supported the invasion of Iraq.”

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

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

Hope , Support

“No country can possibly move ahead, no free society can possibly be sustained, unless it has an educated citizenry whose qualities of mind and heart permit it to take part in the complicated and increasingly sophisticated decisions that pour not only upon the President and upon the Congress, but upon all the citizens who exercise the ultimate power…Quite obviously, there is a higher purpose, and that is the hope that you will turn to the service of the State the scholarship, the education, the qualities which society has helped develop in you; that you will render on the community level, or on the state level, or on the national level, or render on the community level, or on the state level, or on the national level, or the international level a contribution to the maintenance of freedom and peace and the security of our country and those associated with it in a most critical time.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Commencement Address at San Diego State College (226)" (6 June 1963) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1963

Education , Peace , Hope , Exercises

“A criticism with which we have become familiar in this country is that an alarmingly large number of students receiving university education, and the universities are responsible for wastage and unnecessary duplication of teaching arrangements…

… Take the whole of British India with a population of two hundred and sixty-three million. India has only sixteen universities and the number of their students will be about one lac and twenty thousand. The total expenditure on higher education in India is less than four crores rupees.

Let me now turn to other countries. The British Isles afford a good illustration for comparison from the point of view of population which is about is about forty five million; but the number of universities is as many as sixteen – what we have for the whole of India – and fifty-five thousand students receive instructions under their jurisdiction. About six crores and forty lacs of rupees are spent on higher education only in England and Wales. To universities alone within this area the state annually contributes two crores and twenty-seven lacs of rupees.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Calcutta University Convocation on 22nd February 1936.
Source: one crore is equal to ten million
Source: ten lacs is equal to one million

Education , Universe , Country

“My life is ticking away one subway token at a time - a never ending pirouette of arriving and departing, pushing through turnstiles, nodding goodbye and hello. In eight hours I'll be allowed to turn around and go home.”

Rob Payne (1973) Canadian writer

Source: Working Class Zero (2003), Chapter 1, p. 1 (opening line...)

Life , Home , Time

“Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary. By a great effort man has hit upon a method of compensating himself for his basic inferiority. Equipped with various mysterious noise-making instruments, whose potency rests upon their actual form's being unknown to those who hear the sounds — that is, the women and children must never know that they are really bamboo flutes, or hollow logs, or bits of elliptic wood whirled on strings — they can get the male children away from the women, brand them as incomplete, and themselves turn boys into men. Women, it is true, make human beings, but only men can make men.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 84 as cited in: John Whiting, Eleanor Hollenberg Chasdi, Roy D'Andrade (2006) Culture and Human Development: The Selected Papers of John Whiting. p. 240

Women , Men , Children , Boy

“I didn't just start doing this today. Not like some people that have a movie coming out, so they go visit kids in the hospital. You don't need that phony crap. All of these celebrities, they turn my stomach with their funny stuff. I've been going in the ghettos without the press, without bodyguards, talking to kids. "Get to reading, stay in school. You don't have to carry a gun." I know about peer pressure and all that, but I say, "Hey, they called me a sissy because I wouldn't join a gang. Who was calling me a sissy? Does it make me a sissy because somebody called me a sissy?" […] I'm going to fight if you touch me or hurt me or do harm to my family. But if you call me a bad name, or whatnot, I'm too smart for that. That's the message the kids need to hear coming from me. I tell them, "If I fought every time somebody called me a name, I would never get out of jail. But I'm disciplined. I'm smarter than that." So I tell them, like my mother said, "Consider the source."”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

When you see who called you the name, then you understand why they're doing it. Then you don't have to stoop that low.

People , School , Family , Understanding

“Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Love , Wisdom , Books , World

“I was so focused on all of that, that it took me many hours, until my kids called, ironically. My kids both called and just left a little message that they were OK. And I turned around and went — Oh, man that really hit me like a ton of bricks — But most of the time we were spared that agony for the time being.”

Peter Jennings (1938–2005) News anchor

Larry King Interview (8 September 2003)

Time

“This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring.”

Charlotte Brontë book Shirley

Source: Shirley (1849), Ch. 20: To-Morrow

Spring , Winter

“Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Stanza 1
Epistle to a Young Friend (1786)

“But even this apparently unfounded hatred is not yet the most characteristic achievement of ressentiment. Even here, it is still directed against particular persons or (as in class hatred) particular groups. Its effect is much more profound when it goes beyond such determinate hostilities—when it does not lead to a falsification of the world view, but perverts the sense of values itself. What Nietzsche calls “falsification of the tablets of value” is built on this foundation. In this new phase, the man of ressentiment no longer turns away from the positive values, nor does he wish to destroy the men and things endowed with them. Now the values themselves are inverted: those values which are positive to any normal feeling become negative. The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life , Death , Men , Hostility

“There are two very attractive facts about Ghazwah-tal Hind. The first is that, a Muslim, who participates in it with Iman and sincerity, to support the Truth and to subdue falsehood, will be declared as free from Jahannam by Allah‑swt. If he is killed in it, he will be included in the most chosen of the Shuhada and if he lives, he will receive the certificate of freedom from Jahannam. Secondly; Although it will be a very intense and protracted war, it will end in victory for Islam and the Muslims. Pakistan will no longer remain a small Muslim country but the entire al-Hind will turn into an Islamic state. The Renaissance of Islam will commence here and Truth will prevail over the entire world.”

Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan (1934–2017) Pakistani Sufi leader

War , Truth , World , Support

“My wife [painter Musa McKim, ] on her own, did several other murals for the Section of Fine Arts. Then in 1940 and 1941 we moved out of New York City and came to Woodstock [at the age of 54] where we did the Laconia murals and several murals for the Presidents Lines, which were later turned into troop ships. I then went to teach at the University of Iowa where I finished the mural for the Social Security Building in Washington, D. C., in 1942 or 1943, I'm not sure which. With the exception of some visual aid material for the navy flight program in Iowa - navigational maps, etc.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

this marks the end of the mural period.
n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Age , Art , Universe

“As a result of transformation of power, functions of enforcement will slowly turn into new, networked systems of governance in the following directions: upward to the global level; downward to the communal level; and frontward to the professional level.”

Tigran Sargsyan (1960) Economist, politician

The End of State http://www.gov.am/files/docs/217.pdf
2008

Communication

“I have turned into a big nature fan as well…. I can afford it more today. These childhood influences have shaped me into what I am today.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Always invest in businesses of the future and in talent

Nature , Childhood

“Of course, art turns many people away for there has to be a limit. The limits between the gifted and the ungifted.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

P 27
The Piano Teacher (1988)

People , Art

“I knew what a circle could do. Both eyes focus on it. It stamps itself out, like a dot. This, in turn, causes one's vision to spread, as in a mandala in Tantric art.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 8
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Art

“… the world’s cheapest small car, Tata’s Nano, worth only $1500. This toy-like ill-fated vehicle, whose destiny it was to look as if it had been prematurely brought into the world, more foetus than car, and whose birth was near abortive and then indefinitely delayed, this car, when it finally took to the road, turned out to have an engine that at times exploded mysteriously. Until 2009, it was seen to be Bengal’s quirky but irreplaceable mascot for development.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Calcutta: Two Years in The City (2013)

Fate , World , Cars , Birth

“I do not consider myself a philosopher. I am a biologist, attempting to grapple with the Schrodinger question, “What is Life?” It turns out that this is not an empirical question, to be resolved through observation in a laboratory.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Rosen, Robert. " On the limitations of scientific knowledge http://www.synapse9.com/ref/Rosen_On_Limitations_of_Sci.pdf." Boundaries and barriers: On the limits to scientific knowledge, Reading, MA: Perseus Books (1996): 199-214.

Life , Question

“I was once offered a 3-way in Austin, and I turned it down because it was one of those deals where it was two dudes and…me. I don't even watch Two and a Half Men.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

A Little Unprofessional

Men , Way

“SPACESHIP EARTH: Earth is an automated Spaceship speeding rotatively at 66,000 miles per hour around the sun, which in turn, is on its own course at 6.0 kilometers per second within the Galactic Nebula. The awareness of Earth’s mobile patterning within the cosmos gives the perspective needed to deal with the overall evolutionary event-patterning aboard our spherical space-vehicle Earth, rather than the minute details. The automated events transpiring aboard Earth lend powerful advantages to those who comprehend the automation and attempt to work with it in the most long-term, humanly advantageous ways rather than ignorantly attempting to control or oppose it. Both Earth’s and humanity’s automation are biological.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Source: 1960s, Presentation to U.S. Congressional Sub-Committee on World Game (1969), p. 102

Way , Sun , Speed

“Ralegh's own circle, which turned Christopher Marlowe into a rationalist, was dominated by… Thomas Hariot. For navigation is dependent on astronomy; it went hand in hand with the new speculations about the world and the solar system… in turn, the voyages of the great navigators inspired the literature of Elizabethan England. The worlds of art and science and the physical world unfolded then together. It was not by accident that the first table of logarithms was published within a few years of the First Folio.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

World , Art , Literature , Science

“If he [ Anthony] heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own place until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue.”

Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) Patriarch of Alexandria

§ 3
Life of Anthony of Egypt

Way , Bee

“A few years after the Constitution was adopted Alexander Hamilton said to Josiah Quincy that he thought the Union might endure for thirty years. He feared the centrifugal force of the system. The danger, he said, would proceed from the States, not from the national government. But Hamilton seems not to have considered that the vital necessity which had always united the colonies from the first New England league against the Indians, and which, in his own time, forced the people of the country from the sands of a confederacy to the rock of union, would become stronger every year and inevitably develop and confirm a nation. Whatever the intention of the fathers in 1787 might have been, whether a league or confederacy or treaty, the conclusion of the children in 1860 might have been predicted. Plant a homogeneous people along the coast of a virgin continent. Let them gradually overspread it to the farther sea, speaking the same language, virtually of the same religious faith, inter- marrying, and cherishing common heroic traditions. Suppose them sweeping from end to end of their vast domain without passports, the physical perils of their increasing extent constantly modified by science, steam, and the telegraph, making Maine and Oregon neighbors, their trade enormous, their prosperity a miracle, their commonwealth of unsurpassed importance in the world, and you may theorize as you will, but you have supposed an imperial nation, which may indeed be a power of evil as well as of good, but which can no more recede into its original elements and local sources than its own Mississippi, pouring broad and resistless into the Gulf, can turn backward to the petty forest springs and rills whence it flows. 'No, no', murmurs the mighty river, 'when you can take the blue out of the sky, when you can steal heat from fire, when you can strip splendor from the morning, then, and not before, may you reclaim your separate drops in me.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

'Yes, yes, my river,' answers the Union, 'you speak for me. I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America'.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Children , People , World , Fear

“People back home call me a heckler, a troublemaker, an irritant, a rebel, an activist, the voice of the people. But that wasn't always me. Growing up, I had a nickname. They used to call me Softy, meaning the soft, harmless boy. Like every other human being, I avoided trouble. In my childhood, they taught me silence. Don't argue, do as you're told. In Sunday school, they taught me don't confront, don't argue, even if you're right, turn the other cheek. This was reinforced by the political climate of the time. Kenya is a country where you are guilty until proven rich. Kenya's poor are five times more likely to be shot dead by the police who are meant to protect them than by criminals. This was reinforced by the political climate of the day.”

Boniface Mwangi (1983) Kenyan photojournalist

The day I stood up alone

People , School , Home , Boy

“I turn out the kitchen light and sit down at the kitchen table, my head buried in my arms. I try to tell myself that I feel sick from having had to write all those lies on my application. I'd commit suicide if I really saw myself as Keith's "assistant"! But I know that isn't the half of it…. If I do "choose to finish my B. A." I'll end up like Keith. But if I don't "choose" school I'll end up in Canada! And if I don't "choose" either – wouldn't I end up in Vietnam?”

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

Pages 196–97. Fall of 1966. Satin has dropped out of SUNY and is sitting in his girlfriend's apartment in Manhattan. The application is for Canadian immigrant status. Keith, a supportive college professor, is seen by Satin as a plastic sellout.
Confessions of a Young Exile (1976)

School , Feeling , Suicide , Light

“What Kant regarded as a unique (Copernican) turn to transcendental reflection becomes in Hegel a general mechanism for turning consciousness back upon itself. This mechanism has been switched on and off time and time again in the development of spirit. As the subject becomes conscious of itself, it destroys one form of consciousness after another. This process epitomizes the subjective experience that what initially appears to the subject as a being in itself can become content only in the forms imparted to it by the subject. The transcendental philosopher’s experience is thus, according to Hegel, reenacted naively whenever an in-itself becomes a for-the-subject. What Hegel calls “Dialectical” is the reconstruction of this recurrent experience and of its assimilation by the subject, which gives rise to ever more complex structures. … Hegel, it should be noted, exposes himself to a criticism. … Reconstructing successive forms of consciousness is one thing. Proving the necessity of their succession is quite another.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Source: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983), p. 5

Appearance , Time , Success

“In the course of some ninety years, the wheel has certainly turned full circle. The Protectionist case, which seemed to most of our fathers and grandfathers so outrageous, even so wicked, has been re-stated and carried to victory. Free Trade, which was almost like a sacred dogma, is in its turn rejected and despised… many acute and energetic minds in the ’forties “looked to the end.” They foresaw what seemed beyond the vision of their rivals— that after the period of expansion would come the period of over-production… [Disraeli] perceived only too clearly the danger of sacrificing everything to speed. Had he lived now, he would not have been surprised. The development of the world on competitive rather than on complementary lines; the growth of economic nationalism; the problems involved in the increasing productivity of labour, both industrial and agricultural; the absence of any new and rapidly developing area offering sufficient attractive opportunities for investment; finally, the heavy ensuing burden of unemployment, in every part of the world— all these phenomena, so constantly in our minds as part of the conditions of crisis, would have seemed to the men of Manchester nothing but a hideous nightmare. Disraeli would have understood them. I think he would have expected them.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

‘Preface’ to Derek Walker-Smith, The Protectionist Case in the 1840s (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933), pp. vii-viii.
1920s-1950s

Men , World , Problem , Thinking

“Eating, and that feel of food in the mouth, is all part of comfort and affection and warmth, and I think that a lot of the reason that I turned to food was because I was actually quite a lonely child.”

Nigel Slater (1958) English food writer, journalist and broadcaster

AfterElton.com - Interview with Nigel Slater (page 2) http://www.afterelton.com/archive/elton/print/2005/1/nigelslater2.html

Food , Feeling , Thinking , Parting

“In the big house,
Where the sun lives,
With the walls so white and blue.
In the red soil,
All the green grows.
And the winds blow across your face.
They blow across your heart.
It's the time of the turning and there's something stirring outside.
It's the time of turning and we'd better learn to say our goodbyes.”

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

The Time of the Turning
Song lyrics, OVO (2000)

Learning , Time , Sun , Heart

“In pursuance of my business and professional studies, I use the naked model.A number of my women pupils have for economy studied from each others' figures, and of these some have obtained from time to time my criticism on their work. I have frequently used as models for myself my male pupils: very rarely female pupils and then only with the knowledge and consent of their mothers.One of the women pupils some years ago gave to her lover who communicated it to Mr. Frank Stephens a list of these pupils as far as she knew them, and since that time Mr. Frank Stephens has boasted to witnesses of the power which this knowledge gave him to turn me out of the Academy, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, & the Academy Art Club, and of his intention to drive me from the city.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Emily Sartain (1886-03-25). Frank Stephens was Eakins' brother-in-law.

Women , Art , Communication , Lovers

“My present opinion favors the following disposition of the troops for winter-quarters. The garrison here should consist of Patterson's, Learned's, Clinton's, and the North Carolina brigades, which, I believe, will forma force sufficient for the purpose. If the horse is posted in Connecticut, as seems to be thought on, I think the troops coming from Rhode Island, in con junction with the horse, will form a sufficient covering party for the exposed parts of Connecticut and Westchester. I would only wish Clinton's brigade to be here, because it may interest the inhabitants to furnish supplies in the winter, and to encourage the militia to turn out with spirit, should the enemy make a sudden move towards the post. The connection between the army and country will have an influence in both these respects.”

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

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Thinking , Learning , Winter , Horse

“Modern science was born in the period beginning with Copernicus's work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (l543) and ending with Newton's Philosophia Naturalis Philosophiae Mathematica.
For reasons not to be entered into here, mediaeval scholasticism had not succeeded in finding an effective method for the investigation of natural phenomena. And Humanism, though indirectly instrumental in the creation of natural science through the promotion of knowledge of Greek works on mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy, had not been able to find the new paths that science would have to follow. The conviction shared by the two movements, viz. that science was something which mankind had once possessed, but had since lost, turned men's eyes towards the past instead of to the future — to ancient books instead of to new investigations and experiments.
The creation of modern science required a different philosophy. Man had to realize that if science is to grow, each generation must make its own contribution; and that the accumulated wisdom of antiquity is useful only as a starting-point for new research.”

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965) Dutch historian

Source: Simon Stevin: Science in the Netherlands around 1600, 1970, p. 1; Lead paragraph

Wisdom , Men , Books , Mathematics

“It should be repeated that the English and Scots, when they meet in battle, fight hard and show great staying-power. They do not spare themselves, but go on to the limits of endurance. They are not like the Germans, who make one attack and then, if they see that they cannot break into the enemy and beat him, all turn back in a body.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et scahiez que Anglois et Escoçoiz, quant ilz se treuvent en bataille ensamble, sont dures gens et de longue alainne, et point ne s'esparngnent, mais s'entendent de eulx mettre à oultranche, comment qu'il prende. Ilz ne ressamblent pas les Alemans qui font une empainte, et, quant ilz voient qu'ilz ne puellent rompre ne entrer en leurs ennemis, ilz s'en retournent tout à ung fais.
Book 3, p. 345.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Fight

“blossoming are people…
all the earth has turned to sky
…and i am you are i am we”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

32
XAIPE (1950)

People

“I think it's quite enough to simply be sarcastic about something. I like to do that quite a lot, and it's one of my favorite things to look at. That's why I think there's a thin line between melodrama and satire, and I like to dance across that line sometimes. I like the story to take a very funny turn or have a character who is much more of a cartoon.”

Frank Miller (1957) American writer, artist, film director

Source: Eisner/Miller (2005), p. 95

Thinking , Dance

“Smith’s own theory, as given in the first five editions, is for the most part a theory of moral judgement —that is to say, it is an answer to the second question set out in the initial description of the subject of philosophical ethics. […] There is no thoroughgoing inquiry of what constitutes the character of virtue, as required by the first of the two questions, even though the historical survey at the end of the book deals with both questions in turn and, as it happens, gives more space to the first topic, the character of virtue, than to the second, the nature of moral judgement.
The fact is that Smith did not reach a distinctive view on the first topic. He has a distinctive view of the content of virtue, that is to say, a view of what are the cardinal virtues; but he does not give us an explanation of what is meant by the concept of moral virtue, how it arises, how it differentiates moral excellence from other forms of human excellence. […] I think that, when Smith came to revise the work for the sixth edition, he realized that he had not dealt at all adequately with the first of the two questions, and for that reason he added the new part VI, entitled ‘Of the Character of Virtue’, to remedy the omission. It is not, in my opinion, an adequate remedy, and it certainly does not match Smith’s elaborate answer to the second question. […]
Since the second of the two topics, the nature of moral judgement, is the main subject of both versions of Smith’s book, I shall give it priority in what follows. There is in fact a clear development in Smith’s view of this topic, especially in his conception of the impartial spectator, the most important element of Smith’s ethical theory.”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (2007), Ch. 1: Two Versions

Books , Question , Nature , Thinking

“Although we may not be able to mark the precise boundary beyond which organic beings do not appear, it is certain that in all geological epochs, subsequent, at least, to that of the primary rocks, animals and plants have existed in successive families; they have been created, have lived their day, and by the operation of physical causes, have perished; while new races have been called into being, and in their turn have ceased to be, in order to give room to other families, requiring, perhaps, a different climate, and a new order of things.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Vol. 1
The Wonders of Geology (1839)

Family , Appearance , Success , Animals

“We sometimes live to three hundred years, but when we cease to exist here we only become the foam on the surface of the water, and we have not even a grave down here of those we love. We have not immortal souls, because Estelle is a star and we shall never live again; but, like the green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water, and behold all the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid
Fairy Tales (1835)

Love , Soul , Star , Water

“If you turn up the volume to your computer, and set the the little microphone inside to maximum level it will feed back, just like any other type of microphone. I just put it through some filters and add some white noise or pink noise. For me, the thing was to use elements that were marginal in other types of music, take something of no real value and use it.”

Mattin (1977) Spanish musician

Interview by Dan Warburton (July 2009)

Music

“Everything turns only to memory.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"The Question Mark Inside" (2008)

Memory

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

Life , Death , God , Age

“Your predator is close behind you and will infallibly be your death.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Carmody said, in a moment of strange calm.” But in terms of long-range planning, I never did expect to get out of this Universe alive.”
“That is meaningless,” the Prize said. “The fact is, you have lost everything.”
“I don’t agree,” Carmody said. “Permit me to point out that I am presently still alive.”
“Agreed. But only for the moment.”
“I have always been alive only for the moment,” Carmody said. “I could never count on more. It was my error to expect more. That holds true, I believe, for all of my possible and potential circumstances.”
“Then what do you hope to achieve with your moment?”
“Nothing,” Carmody said. “Everything.”
“I don’t understand you any longer,” the Prize said. “Something about you has changed, Carmody. What is it?”
“A minor thing,” Carmody told him. “I have simply given up a longevity which I never possessed anyhow. I have turned away from the con game which the Gods run in their heavenly sideshow. I no longer care under which shell the pea of immortality might be found. I don’t need it. I have my moment, which is quite enough.”
“Saint Carmody,” the Prize said, in tones of deepest sarcasm. “No more than a shadow’s breadth separates you and death! What will you do now with your pitiable moment?”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

“I shall continue to live it,” Carmody said. “That is what moments are for.”
Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (pp. 189-190; closing words)

Death , God , Hope , Error

“That the army of the discontented is gathering fresh recruits day by day is true, and if this army should become so large that, driven to desperation, it should one day arise in its wrath and grapple with its real or fancied enemy, the responsibility for that act must fall upon the head of those who could have averted the blow, but who turned a deaf ear to the supplication of suffering humanity and gave the screw of oppression an extra turn because they had the power.”

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

"The Army of the Discontented," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Army%20of%20the%20Discontented;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0381;idno=nora0140-4;node=nora0140-4%3A8 North American Review, vol. 140, whole no. 341 (April 1885), p. 371.

Suffering

“And the sleeper, eye unlidding,
Heard a voice for ever bidding
Much farewell to Dolly Gray;
Turning weary on his truckle-
Bed he heard the honey-suckle
Lauded in apiarian lay.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald's Peace Poem"
Reginald (1904)

“And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)

“The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four -the years turn dry as leaves.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

Summer

“They went on playing quietly and waiting for Sam (who had gone back to the bedroom to seek Tommy) and for their turns to see Mother. Bonnie meanwhile, with a rueful expression, was leaning out the front window, and presently she could not help interrupting them, 'Why is my name Mrs Cabbage, why not Mrs Garlic or Mrs Horse Manure?' They did not hear her, so intent were they, visiting each other and inquiring after the health of their respective new babies. They did not hear her complaining to Louie that, instead of being Mrs Grand Piano or Mrs Stair Carpet, they called her Garbage, 'Greta Garbage, Toni Toilet,' said she laughing sadly, 'because they always see me out there with the garbage can and the wet mop; association in children's naïve innocent minds you see!'
'Oh no, it isn't that, protested Louie, Garbage is just a funny word: they associate you with singing and dancing and all those costumes you have in your trunk!”

Christina Stead book The Man Who Loved Children

'Do you think so?' Bonnie was tempted to believe. 'Mrs Strip Tease?'
The Man Who Loved Children (1940)

Children , Health , Thinking , Singing

“Now they saw it — its newness, its raw crudeness, and its strength — and turned their shuddering eyes away. "Give us back our well-worn husk," they said, "where we were so snug and comfortable." And then they tried word magic. "Conditions are fundamentally sound," they said — by which they meant to reassure themselves that nothing now was really changed, that things were as they always had been, and as they always would be, forever and ever, amen. But they were wrong. They did not know that you can't go home again. America had come to the end of something and to the beginning of something else. But no one knew what that something else would be and out of the change and uncertainly and the wrongness of the leaders grew fear and desperation and before long hunger stalked the streets. Through it all there was still only one certainty, though no one saw it yet. America was still America, and whatever new thing came of it would be American.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Book III: An End and a Beginning
You Can't Go Home Again (1940)

Hunger , Fear , Home , Change

“Every one of a common capacity hath the opportunity and ability to attain [self-knowledge], if he will but recollect his rambling thoughts, turn them in upon himself, watch the motions of his heart.”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

Knowledge , Heart

“Men glibly turn to an infallible Bible, or an infallible church, or an infallible Pope, or an infallible conscience, or an infallible Christ, and say that that authority is sufficient for them and enables them to accept truth. I believe all that kind of talk is false. It is false psychology or a failure of insight, and it is the fruit of mental laziness; a refusal to think things through. The most important convictions in religion cannot really be reached on the word of another. We can assent to propositions out of laziness of thought, or a desire to please, or an inability to argue, but one of the reasons why, in a crisis, men often feel let down by their religion is that they glibly assented to this or that, and falsely called their assent ‘belief.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.50

Men , Truth , Religion , Feeling

“I have been pretty lucky since I left the big leagues. No man who has done the things they accuse me of doing could have been as successful. Everything I touched seemed to turn to money, and I've made my share down through the years. I've been blessed with a good banker, too — my wife. Handing the money to her was just like putting it in the bank. We were married in 1908 when I was just 19 and she was 15, and she has stood by me through everything. We never had any children of our own, but we raised one of my brother's boys from babyhood.”

Joe Jackson (1887–1951) American baseball player

This is the Truth! (1949)

Money , Children , Boy , Success

“In short, the root-head turns the crab into a Darwinian cipher, a feeding machine working entirely in the parasite's service. The castrated crab can make no contribution to its own evolutionary history; its "Darwinian fitness" has become flat zero. …But ever so carefully, for the parasite must maintain the crab in constant and perfect servitude - not draining the host enough to kill this golden goose, but not letting the crab do anything for its own Darwinian benefit.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 369
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

History , Perfection

“Then I added "Blah," with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

The Dharma Bums (1958)

World , Mountain , Understanding

“If investors disagree about future prospects of companies, then inevitably the future is not going to turn out as most — or perhaps even any — investors expect.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 10, The Price Is Not Right, p. 235 (See also: Andy Kessler)

Future

“"All this beauty makes a person realize how insignificant they are," Paul says.
"How insignificant I am. You're the insignificant one"
He grins real big as he realizes how his words sounded. "I didn't mean it like that," he chuckles.
"No, I know what you meant, bud. I was just thinking kind of the same thing. I was looking at all this depth and it came to me how very shallow you are."
"Ha, ha," Paul chortles. He takes a few steps down the trail and turns. "You know, Don, I was just looking at this little flowery cactus here and thinking how nice it looks and it made me realize how ugly you are."
"Is that right," I say. "Well, I was just considering how smart these rocks look and it made me realize how dumb you are." With that I give him a little kick in the backside.
"How smart these rocks are?" he heckles. "Well, I was just looking at that cloud up there, reflecting on its beauty and stuff, and it hit me how much you smell."
"Is that right," I say. "The cloud made you realize that, huh?"
Paul distances himself a little and keeps turning to see if I am going to kick him again. He's got this grin going like he got the last laugh.
"You know, Paul, I was just looking at this pebble and it made me realize that I'm going to tackle you and throw you off the ledge."
"I see. That's real deep, Don. The pebble; you got that from a pebble?"”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Beauty , Thinking , Personality

“No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Ch. 2

Evil , Chance , Housing , Despair

“Now, at present Britain has no V. A. T., and the questions whether this new tax should be introduced, how it should be levied, and what should be its scope, would be matters of debate in the country and in Parliament. The essence of parliamentary democracy lies in the power to debate and impose taxation: it is the vital principle of the British House of Commons, from which all other aspects of its sovereignty ultimately derive. With Britain in the community, one important element of taxation would be taken automatically, necessarily and permanently out of the hands of the House of Commons…Those matters which sovereign parliaments debate and decide must be debated and decided not by the British House of Commons but in some other place, and by some other body, and debated and decided once for the whole Community…it is a fact that the British Parliament and its paramount authority occupies a position in relation to the British nation which no other elective assembly in Europe possesses. Take parliament out of the history of England and that history itself becomes meaningless. Whole lifetimes of study cannot exhaust the reasons why this fact has come to be, but fact it is, so that the British nation could not imagine itself except with and through its parliament. Consequently the sovereignty of our parliament is something other for us than what your assemblies are for you. What is equally significant, your assemblies, unlike the British Parliament, are the creation of deliberate political acts, and most of recent political acts. The notion that a new sovereign body can be created is therefore as familiar to you as it is repugnant, not to say unimaginable, to us. This deliberate, and recent, creation of sovereign assemblies on the continent is in turn an aspect of the fact that the continent is familiar, and familiar in the recent past, with the creation of nation states themselves. Four of the six members of the Community came into existence as such no more than a century or a century and a half ago – within the memory of two lifetimes.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Lyons (12 February 1971), from The Common Market: The Case Against (Elliot Right Way Books, 1971), pp. 65-68.
1970s

Democracy , Imagination , History , Communication

“Some men abuse women, but you should never raise your hand against them. You do not know how much they bear—they are forbearance itself. If you abuse them, where shall they turn? They are aspects of the Divine Mother, and if the Mother is insulted, the Lord is displeased. Thus your well-being lies in making them happy.”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

Source: God Lived with Them, p.433

Women , Men , Happiness

“A fairly large part, if not, indeed, the very nucleus, of the Fascist movement has been built up of ex-Socialists who abandoned their party because of, or in consequence of, the war. This observation is particularly true of the younger element in the Socialistic party, including young men of a practical turn, often restless in temperament, who had rallied to the Socialist party not so much because of its positive economic program, as because of its negative program of protest against the aimless individualism of the Liberal regime, and who found in Fascism the means for effectuating their desire to take a part and to reconstruct.”

Corrado Gini (1884–1965) Italian statistician

"The Scientific Basis of Fascism", in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 42 (Academy of Political Science, 1927), p. 104.

Men , War , Parting

“If in the case of a notion whose specialisations form a continuous manifoldness, one passes from a certain specialisation in a definite way to another, the specialisations passed over form a simply extended manifoldness, whose true character is that in it a continuous progress from a point is possible only on two sides, forwards or backwards. If one now supposes that this manifoldness in its turn passes over into another entirely different, and again in a definite way, namely so that each point passes over into a definite point of the other, then all the specialisations so obtained form a doubly extended manifoldness. In a similar manner one obtains a triply extended manifoldness, if one imagines a doubly extended one passing over in a definite way to another entirely different; and it is easy to see how this construction may be continued. If one regards the variable object instead of the determinable notion of it, this construction may be described as a composition of a variability of n + 1 dimensions out of a variability of n dimensions and a variability of one dimension.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

Way , Imagination

“To blame feminism for women's “lesser life” is to miss entirely the point of feminism, which is to win women a wider range of experience. Feminism remains a pretty simple concept, despite repeated — and enormously effective efforts to dress it up in greasepaint and turn its proponents into gargoyles. As Rebecca West wrote sardonically in 1913, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: l only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."”

Susan Faludi book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Backlash (1992)

Life , Women , People , Effort

“The summer of 2000 was a real turning point for me, and I kind of got my act together and laid the bottle down and got to work, and really last five years have been the greatest five years of my life, personally and then -- as a result of that, I guess -- professionally. Six months after that, I met Amy [Poehler]. We had sort of met before, but we started dating. From the moment we met, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was great. We didn't know what we were doing, and all of a sudden she got SNL, so we kind of decided that I guess I had to move to New York; otherwise it wasn't going to work out. So I moved back to New York and it was the greatest. It was great. Probably the best thing that's ever happened to me is Amy.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"The Will Arnett Interview," Television Without Pity (2005) http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/articles/content/a1005/index-4.html
2005

Life , Summer , Personality

“Pena
Her little head clinking
Like a barrel of red velvet balls
Full past noise
Treats filled her eyes
Turning them yellow like enamel coated tacks
Soft like butter hard not to pour”

Captain Beefheart (1941–2010) musician

Pena, sung by Jeff Cotton, better known as Antennae Jimmy Semens
Trout Mask Replica (1969)

Past

“One room after another in the British museum took my enthusiasm. The Royal College of Art meant nothing in comparison. Every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday I would go to the British Museum. But not till after three months did things begin to settle into any pattern of reality for me. Till then everything was wonderful – a new world at every turn. That is the value of the British Museum: you have everything behind you; you are free to try to find out your own way and, after a while, to find what appeals to you most. And after the first excitement it was the art of ancient Mexico that spoke to me most – except perhaps Romanesque, or early Norman. And I admit clearly and frankly that early Mexican art formed my views of carving as much as everything I could do.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

in 'Partisan Review', New York, March-April 1947
1940 - 1955

World , Art , Way , Reality

“If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

Donald Knuth, quoted in: Arturo Gonzalez-Gutierrez (2007) Minimum-length Corridors: Complexity and Approximations. p. 99

Time

“The nuclear bomb will turn warfare into the juggling of images.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 360

“The Liberation Ladies will lead to generations of women willing to support a tired husband, and provide for his old age. He can be snug-abed in the morning while she pounds off in her thick boots to her job or carries a briefcase to her office. And when she comes home at night - she can cook his dinner, too, and wash and iron his shirts. She can do the housework, while he watches TV and complains of the pain in his back - which she will eventually rub away at bedtime. Women wanted careers, didn't they? They can do a man’s work, can't they? Well, let 'em do it, and be glad they were able to get a husband besides, even if they have to take care of him! Men, in short, are licking their lips and, for the first time in history, are readying themselves to be the exploiters in their turn…. Mom's out there, plugging and 'fulfilling' herself, and why should Pop worry? He's had it coming to him since Eve….”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

"They're Spoiling Eve's Great Con Game" in American Opinion (September 1970), p. 6
1970s-

Women , Men , Pain , Age

“"Soviet Union is under dictatorship of the proletariat, the intelligentsia class is going to be starved to death."…a well known reporter had so warned me. Yes, I am afraid I might lost some sleep. But then, dictatorship of the proletariat(at present), isn't it for the forth coming of the classless society? As long as you do not murder it, naturally it's success will arrive soon, the elimination of classes will arrive soon, then no one will be "starved to death"…But now, the imperialists and their running dogs, still trying to tell us the Soviet Union's shortcomings, as if they really wish that Soviet Union would become heaven overnight, and all of it's people would enjoy life. Now, it turns out to be like that, it (imperialist) is disappointed, and feel uneasy…This is really the tears of the devil.”

Lu Xun (1881–1936) Chinese novelist and essayist

Source: 1932年《我們不再受騙了》

Life , Death , People , Dogs

“I suspect that in the beginning Maurice hoped that Rosy would calm down. Yet mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents. So it was quite easy to imagine her the product of an unsatisfied mother who unduly stressed the desirability of professional careers that could save bright girls from marriages to dull men. But this was not the case. Her dedicated austere life could not be thus explained — she was the daughter of a solidly comfortable, erudite banking family.
Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA. Not that at times he'd didn't see some reason for her complaints — King's had two combination rooms, one for men, the other for women, certainly a thing of the past. But he was not responsible, and it was no pleasure to bear the cross for the added barb that the women's combination room remained dingily pokey whereas money had been spent to make life agreeable for him and his friends when they had their morning coffee.
Unfortunately, Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot. To start with, she had been given to think that she had a position for several years. Also there was no denying that she had a good brain. If she could keep her emotions under control, there was a good chance she could really help him. But merely wishing for relations to improve was taking something of a gamble, for Cal Tech's fabulous chemist Linus Pauling was not subject to the confines of British fair play. Sooner or later Linus, who had just turned fifty, was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. There was no doubt he was interested. … The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.”

James D. Watson book The Double Helix

Description of Rosalind Franklin, whose data and research were actually key factors in determining the structure of DNA, but who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer, before the importance of her work could be widely recognized and acknowledged. In response to these remarks her mother stated "I would rather she were forgotten than remembered in this way." As quoted in "Rosalind Franklin" at Strange Science : The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology by Michon Scott http://www.strangescience.net/rfranklin.htm
The Double Helix (1968)

Life , Women , Men , Money

“Bent double like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.”

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Dulce et Decorum Est (1917)

Distant

“An examination of our terms, such as competition, rivalry, emulation, etc., reveals that the traditional perspective remains inscribed in the language. Competitors are fundamentally those who run or walk together, rivals who dwell on opposite banks of the same river, etc…The modern view of competition and conflict is the unusual and exceptional view, and our incomprehension is perhaps more problematic than the phenomenon of primitive prohibition. Primitive societies have never shared our conception of violence. For us, violence has a conceptual autonomy, a specificity that is utterly unknown to primitive societies. We tend to focus on the individual act, whereas primitive societies attach only limited importance to it and have essentially pragmatic reasons for refusing to isolate such an act from its context. This context is one of violence. What permits us to conceive abstractly of an act of violence and view it as an isolated crime is the power of a judicial institution that transcends all antagonists. If the transcendence of the judicial institution is no longer there, if the institution loses its efficacy or becomes incapable of commanding respect, the imitative and repetitious character of violence becomes manifest once more; the imitative character of violence is in fact most manifest in explicit violence, where it acquires a formal perfection it had not previously possessed. At the level of the blood feud, in fact, there is always only one act, murder, which is performed in the same way for the same reasons in vengeful imitation of the preceding murder. And this imitation propagates itself by degrees. It becomes a duty for distant relatives who had nothing to do with the original act, if in fact an original act can be identified; it surpasses limits in space and time and leaves destruction everywhere in its wake; it moves from generation to generation. In such cases, in its perfection and paroxysm mimesis becomes a chain reaction of vengeance, in which human beings are constrained to the monotonous repetition of homicide. Vengeance turns them into doubles.”

René Girard book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

Source: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), p. 11-12.

Way , Distant , Time , Perfection

“Papa told her about a Lohengrin performance. It was just before his first entrance. He was ready to step into the boat, which, drawn by a swan, was to take him on-stage. Somehow the stagehand on the other side got his signals mixed, started pulling, and the swan left without Papa. He quietly turned around and said: "What time's the next swan?"”

Walter Slezak (1902–1983) actor

That story has since become a classic in operatic lore.
Source: What Time's the Next Swan? (1962), p. 210

Time

“A man who works under orders with other men must be without vanity. If he has too strong a will of his own and if his ideas are in conflict with those of his chief, the execution of orders will always be uncertain because of his efforts to interpret them in his own way. Faith in the chief must keep the gang together. Obviously deference must not turn into servility. A chief of staff or a departmental head should be able, if it seems to him (rightly or wrongly) that his superior is making a serious mistake, to tell him so courageously. But this sort of collaboration is really effective only if such frankness has true admiration and devotion behind it. If the lieutenant does not admit that his chief is more experienced and has better judgment than he himself, he will serve him badly. Criticism of the chief by a subordinate must be accidental and not habitual. What must an assistant do if he is sure he is right and if his chief refuses to accept his criticisms? He must obey the order after offering his objections. No collective work is possible without discipline. If the matter is so serious that it can have a permanent effect upon the future of a country, an army, or a commercial enterprise, the critic may hand in his resignation. But this must be done only as a last resort; as long as a man thinks he can be useful he must remain at his post.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Men , Faith , Way , Idea

“Cooking professionally is a dominant act, at all times about control. Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It’s about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate entirely to someone else. It’s about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating, and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience as if it were a warm bath. It’s about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen. Let it happen to you.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Fate , Time , Personality , Cooking

“I can see the purpose now and all I've learned
All the roads and where they've turned
I can see, I can see everything, the total truth
I'm ready for another youth.”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

Going to fly

"Temporary And Eternal"
Equipoise (1993)

Truth , Youth , Learning , Flying

“People are going to dislike you if you make a decision, even if it turns out to be the right one.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

People , Decision

“Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.”

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan

Saint Joan : A Chronicle Play In Six Scenes And An Epilogue (1923) - Full text online http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200811h.html
1920s

“Circles, like the soul, are neverending and turn round and round without a stop”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

This adage had previously appeared, identically worded, in Coleridge's The Statesman's Manual (1816)
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles

Soul

“Having departed from your house, turn not back; for the furies will be your attendants.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

Symbol 15
The Symbols

Housing

“The doves are pleased that [Robert McNamara] finally concedes that "our blundering efforts to do good" turned into a "dangerous mistake," as Anthony Lewis put the matter long after corporate America had determined that the game was not worth the candle. As the doves had by then come to recognize, although we had pursued aims that were "noble" and "motivated by the loftiest intentions," they were nevertheless "illusory" and it ended up as a "failed crusade" (Stanley Karnow). McNamara has now "paid his debt," Theodore Draper writes in the New York Review, finally recognizing that "The Vietnam War peculiarly demanded a hardheaded assessment of what it was worth in the national interest of the United States," just as the invasion of Afghanistan "peculiarly demanded" such an assessment in the Kremlin. Draper is outraged by the "vitriolic and protracted campaign" against McNamara by the New York Times. "The case against McNamara largely hinges on the premise that he did not express his doubts" about "whether American troops should continue to die" early on, but the Times did not either (though Draper did, he proudly reminds us). Could there be another question?”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Z Magazine, July 1995

War , Game , Motivation , Question

“Our bodies penetrate the sofas upon which we sit and the sofas penetrate our bodies. The motorbus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the bus and are blended with it.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 64.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

Housing

“I think that Hitler was abnormal in his sexual needs. That is, he needed too little from the opposite sex. He considered women as objects of beauty, and he often talked with affection about his own mother. I obtained the impression that he disliked his father, because he never mentioned him. But it is a bad thing if a man has too little Eros in him. It makes him insensitive, and probably leads to cruelty. Freud, Sigmund Freud, the last of the great German psychiatrists, who died in England, pointed out the relationship between frustrated love and cruelty. I believe it is what you psychiatrists term sadism. I'm convinced that a man who does not need the love of a woman, and thinks he can forgo it, or who does forgo it, can turn to cruelty and sadism as a substitute.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, July 20, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Love , Women , Beauty , Sex

“If you look at the history of big obstacles in understanding our world, there's usually an intuitive assumption underlying them that's wrong. In the case of the Solar System it was intuitively obvious that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System and things moved around us, but that just turned out to be wrong. … And it intuitively seems correct that the brain is just some sort of computer—it just seems natural. … But it has undermined almost all of our work to build intelligent machines and understand thinking. It's just wrong … the brain isn't like a computer at all.”

Jeff Hawkins (1957) American entrepreneur and neuroscientist; founder of Palm Computing

Morning Edition interview http://www.rni.org/hawkins/Jeff_Hawkins_On_Intelligence.mp3

World , History , Intelligence , Understanding

“A Justice Department survey reports that 70 percent of those arrested for serious crimes are drug uses, which may mean that "drugs cause crime." A more sophisticated analysis suggests that the high cost of drugs, a result of their prohibition, forces drug users to turn crime to support an unnecessarily expensive habit.
Drug prohibition, by giving young people the thrill of breaking the law and giving pushers a strong incentive to find new customers, may actually increase the number of drug users. Moreover, out policy of pressuring friendly governments to wipe out drug cultivation has undermined many of those regimes and provoked resentment against us among their citizens and government officials.
We can either escalate the war on drugs, which would have dire implications for civil liberties and the right to privacy, or find a way to gracefully withdraw. Withdrawal should not be viewed as an endorsement of drug use; it would simply be an acknowledgment that the cost of this war- billions of dollars, runaway crime rates and restrictions on our personal freedom — is too high.”

David Boaz (1953) libertarian, author and editor

"Let's Quit the Drug War" in The New York Times (17 March 1988) http://www.cato.org/research/articles/boaz-880317.html

War , People , Justice , Law

“Think back through all the eras of history—the major ones, the tiny obscure ones known only to scholars. Can you think of a man, ever, who was capable of fashioning the future development of mankind to suit his own idea of it—no matter how noble that ideal may have been? Wouldn’t that be just another form of opinion control—no matter how splendid the conception?”
Kennedy did not turn around.
“It takes a great deal of faith in mankind to keep from directing it the way we think it should go,” he said at last.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 92.

Faith , Way , History , Idea

“Then there’s the styling. Or rather, there isn’t. Any attempt to give these cars a tapering roofline or a curved rear end is wasteful of precious capacity, which means all of them look exactly – and I mean exactly – like chest freezers. And because they have such tiny wheels they actually look like chest freezers on casters. And that in turn means they look absurd.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Sunday Times June 8, 2008, reviewing the Nissan GT-R http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article4076537.ece

Cars

“O the same God that abandon'd her,
Has in turn abandon'd me,
Deep in the Desert of Despair,
I wait at the Well of Misery.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Well of Misery

God , Waiting , Despair

“This setting down and folding our arms, and waiting for sumthing tew turn up, iz just about az rich a speckulashun az going out into a four hundred acre lot, setting down on a sharp stone, with a pail between our knees, and waiting for a cow tew back up and be milked.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Waiting

“Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 383

Life , Death , Pain , Family

“These differences in moral vision and map-making bred, In turn, conflicting institutional needs and social policies, within the constraints of an under-developed economy and society in terms of Western standards. Though both were ‘backward-looking’, the hierarchical and theocratic Byzantine ideal with its cultural affinity to Orthodox Tsarism, lent itself to a rural and patriarchal society whose political institutions would be subordinated to the religious controls of the clergy and their supporters among the notables; their suspicions of the West would be compensated by the eastward drive inherent in the Megali Idea and its dream of a restored Byzantine empire in Anatolia and the Aegean. Whereas the Hellenic vision”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1987), p. 203.

Dreams , Idea , Support

“The word “loser” is spoken with such contempt these days, a man might like to forget the losses in his own life that taught him something about good judgment. The money he invested in that casino in Atlantic City that went bust, the university course he enrolled in that promised to teach him the secrets of success but instead he wound up unemployed and 40 grand in debt, the candidate whose hat he wore who turned out to be tone-deaf and deluded — dumb, dumb, dumb, and yet his loved ones did not chortle and point and do the nyaa-nyaa. They put an arm around him and said, “This is how we learn.””

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

And it is.
"Garrison Keillor: God help us. We’re in trouble down here." in The Washington Post (26 July 2016) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/god-help-us-were-in-trouble-down-here/2016/07/26/989cde08-535d-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html

Love , Life , Money , Secret

“I would not give up the keys to the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn scarcity into a famine.”

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

Sullivan, p. 266 (1843)

“Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain. Thus, it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first, and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Morality
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Pain , Pleasure , Drink

“There is a well known and most profound saying of people wishing to induce sympathy in each other. 'Put yourself in his place,' they say. But it is easy only to put yourself in the place of your equals. At a certain point of inferiority, real or imaginary, this substitution is no longer possible…. Young Vittorio Mussolini has published a book on his Ethiopian campaign, of which I quote this extract: It was thrilling. A huge zariba, surrounded by tall trees, was very difficult to hit. I had to aim very carefully, and I only succeeded the third time. The poor devils inside jumped out when they saw their roof was on fire, and fled madly…surrounded by a ring of flames, four to five thousand Abyssinians died of suffocation. It was like hell itself. Smoke rising up to unbelievable heights, and flames turning the black sky red. Obviously Signor Vittorio Mussolini never dreamt of putting himself in the place of the Ethiopians!”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.222-223

People , Books , Quotes , Hell

“The question was what's happening to the individual in America? Is the individual going the way of the environment, being destroyed? In other words, were we becoming the creatures of the machine?
That was the way people thought in the '60s. Now maybe that's passé today but that's the kind of thing people thought about. Are we turning into machines? They wanted to rebel against that.
Their rebellion cannot be called a success by any means, far from it. Those of us who tried are very grateful that we tried to the degree we did. Anybody who achieved any success against the machine feels good about it.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)

People , Way , Feeling , Question

“Seventy percent of all IT projects fail—and scores of books have attempted to help firms measure and manage IT systems and processes better in order to turn this figure around.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

IT governance, 2004

Books , Help

“The outcome of the Brexit Referendum could very likely to prove to be as significant and as beneficial to Europe as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And the benefits of Brexit won’t just be felt in the UK and Europe - many African countries may reap long-term economic and political benefits from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Project Fear’s apocalyptic claims turned out to be bunkum. We are not in the midst of World War Three. Western Civilization has not collapsed.”

Peter Whittle (politician) (1961) British author, politician, and journalist

100 Reasons to be Cheerful about the Brexit Results http://www.peterwhittleam.com/press-releases/100-reasons-to-be-cheerful-about-the-brexit-result (September 30, 2016)

War , World , Fear , Country

“A fearful thing stood at the cloister's end
And eyed him for a while, then 'gan to wend
Adown the cloisters, and began again
That rattling, and the moan like fiends in pain.
And as it came on towards him, with its teeth
The body of a slain goat did it tear,
The blood whereof in its hot jaws did seethe,
And on its tongue he saw the smoking hair;
Then his heart sank, and standing trembling there,
Throughout his mind wild thoughts and fearful ran:
"Some fiend she was," he said, "the bane of man."
Yet he abode her still, although his blood
Curdled within him: the thing dropped the goat,
And creeping on, came close to where he stood,
And raised its head to him and wrinkled throat.
Then he cried out and wildly at her smote,
Shutting his eyes, and turned and from the place
Ran swiftly, with a white and ghastly face.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Pain , Fear , Tear , Heart

Quotes about turning page 24

Quotes about turning
page 24