Quotes about turning (6191 quotes, page 37)

“We don't allow any prick teasing bimbos on our program. If they don't put out they're thrown out of the van at sixty miles an hour. And they can turn some tricks at the truck stop. That's the best place to find wimmen and that's the best place to leave wimmen.”

Steve Broy (1958) American musician

El Duce, The Man, The Myth, The Video (1993) by Reverend Cuntbag

“I have just concluded my series of paintings, I look at them constantly. I who made them often find them horrible. I understand them only at rare moments, when I have forgotten all about them, on days when I feel kindly disposed and indulgent to their poor maker. Sometimes I am horribly afraid to turn round canvases which I have piled against the wall; I am constantly afraid of finding monsters where I believed there were precious gems!… Thus it does not astonish me that the critics in London relegate me to the lowest rank. Alas! I fear that they are only too justified! - However, at times I come across works of mine which are soundly done and really in my style, and at such moments I find great solace. But no more of that. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters?”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, 20 Nov. 1883; as quoted in Painting Outside the lines, Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, ed. David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 30 Jun 2009, p. 84
1880's

Life , Fear , Art , Feeling

“He willeth that we know by the sweetness and homely loving of Him, that all that we see or feel, within or without, that is contrary to this is of the enemy and not of God. And thus — If we be stirred to be the more reckless of our living or of the keeping of our hearts because that we have knowing of this plenteous love, then need we greatly to beware. For this stirring, if it come, is untrue; and greatly we ought to hate it, for it all hath no likeness of God’s will. And when that we be fallen, by frailty or blindness, then our courteous Lord toucheth us and stirreth us and calleth us; and then willeth He that we see our wretchedness and meekly be aware of it. But He willeth not that we abide thus, nor He willeth not that we busy us greatly about our accusing, nor He willeth not that we be wretched over our self; but He willeth that we hastily turn ourselves unto Him. For He standeth all aloof and abideth us sorrowfully and mournfully till when we come, and hath haste to have us to Him. For we are His joy and His delight, and He is our salve and our life.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 79

Love , Life , God , Hate

“Gary and Melissa loved to make love, loved to make love, loved to make love to each other over and over and over again. For the first few weeks of their relationship, they made love four or five times a night. They were really turned on for a while. Then, to heighten their passion, they bought sex books: The Joy of Sex, The Sensuous Couple, The Joy of Sex Part Two, The Kama Sutra, Even Yet Still More Joy of Sex, Popular Mechanics, Betty Crocker, anything.”

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

"Gary & Melissa"
Lyrics, Mystical Shit (1990)

Love , Books , Making love , Sex

“Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

Lecture notes ms. (c. 1935); as quoted in: Curt D. Meine, ‎Richard L. Knight (1999) The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries. p. 162.
1930s

“I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." It is precisely what I mean by having one's soul obliterated, hermetically closed. Here it would be the special case of intellectual hermetism.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Soul , Nature , Thinking , Effort

“When the wise plant developer goes into his garden or orchard… his eyes turn always first and foremost to the leaves…”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

“The division of opinion turns on the definition of property and the scope of contract. Physical things of themselves are powerless. Even liberty to choose between opportunities is passive and ineffective. But power to withhold opportunities is economic power, and associated power is government. When therefore liberty of contract is merged with property, it adds the liberty of persons to the exclusive holding of things. And this liberty operates in the several directions of liberty to combine their property into an industrial government and to act as a unit, not only in proportioning their resources economically but also in choosing opportunities, in commanding obedience, in persuading or coercing, and in planning for the expectations of an indefinite future.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 320

Future , Personality

“Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"The Bright Field", p. 60
Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)

Life , Youth , Imagination , Past

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men , God , Pleasure , Education

“I had no option to turn down the (Vice Premiership) appointment or make other choices as the country needs me at a time when it is facing the most trying challenge it ever has faced.”

Eric Chu (1961) Taiwanese politician

Eric Chu (2009) cited in " Chu said he could not turn down appointment http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2009/09/08/223721/Chu-said.htm" on The China Post, 8 September 2009.

Time , Country

“The three men I admire most -- the father, son, and Mickie Most -- took the last train for the coast, and rendezvoused with Peter Glaze, to kill Don Maclean.
Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off, This Leaden Pall”

Nigel Blackwell

1993
Lyrics

Men , Training

“The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. I mean, they're a pretty monolithic party. They pretty much, they all behave the same, they all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party. Again, the Democrats abduct everybody you can think of. So, as this gentleman was talking about, it's a coalition, a lot of it independent. The problem is, we gotta make sure that turns into a party, which means this: I've gotta spend time in the communities, and our folks gotta spend time in the communities. I think, we're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things, particularly on jobs, and housing, and business opportunities and college opportunities, and so fourth. I think, there has been a lot of progress in the last 20-40 years, but the stakes keep changing. I think there's a lot of folks who vote, maybe right now, in the Asian-American communities, who don't wanna vote Democrats, but they're angry with the President on his immigration policy, the Patriot Act. But, what we need to do while this is going on, is develop a really close relationship with the Asian-American community, so later on there's gonna be a benefit, you know, more equal division. There'll be some party loyalty, as people would rememeber that we were there when it really made a difference. That's really what I'm trying to do. If I come in here 8 weeks before the elections, we're not getting anywhere. Asking if you would vote, you're still mad at the lesser of two evils. So that's why I'm here 3.5 years before the elections. We want different kind of people to run for office, too. We want a very diverse group of people running for office, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos. I think Villaraigosa's election in Los Angeles is incredibly important for the Democratic Party. Bush can go out and talk all he wants about "this is the party of opportunity", you know, he can make his appointments, Condi Rice, or, what's this guy's name, Commerce Secretary, Gutierrez. But you can't succeed electorally if you're a person of color in then Republican Party, there're very few people who have succeeded. You can pick some out, JC Watts, I'm trying to think of an Asian-American who's been a success who's a Republican, I can't think of one off the top of my head. You know, there's always a few, but not many. Because this is the party of opportunity for people of color, and for communities of color. And we're hoping to cement that relationship so that'll always be that way. [Q: You've been very tough on the Republicans, some Democrats criticized you over the weeked for doing that, Joe Biden…] I just got off the phone with John Edwards. What happened was, John Edwards was, in a sense, set up by the reporter, "well you know, Governor Dean said this". Well what I said was, the Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people. That's essentially the gist of the quote, and, you know, the RNC put out a press release. I don't think there's a lot of difference between me and John Edwards right now, I haven't spoken to Senator Biden, but I'm sure that I will. Today, it's all over the wires that Durbin and Sheila Jackson Lee and all of these folks are coming to my defense. Look, we have to be tough on the Republicans; the Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans, and they don't have any understanding of what it is to have to go out and try to make ends meet. You know, the context of what I was talking about was these long lines that you have to wait in to vote. How could you design a system that sometimes causes people to vote, to stand in line for 6 or 8 hours, if you had any understanding what their lives are like: they gotta pick up the kids, they gotta work, sometimes they have two jobs. So that was the context of the remarks. [crosstalk/laughter] This is one of those flaps that comes up once in awhile when I get tough, but I think we all wanna be tougher on the Republicans.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Discussion with reporters Portia Li and Carla Marinucci, in San Francisco http://web.archive.org/web/20060427191647/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/07/MNdean07.TMP&o=1, June 6, 2005

People , Hope , Angels , Color

“Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.
Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn't notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.
There were others like me, sharing the dark and the solitude, but they were huddled in the recessions of the doorways not wanting to share the wet and the cold. I could feel their eyes follow me briefly before they turned inward to their thoughts again.
So I followed the hard concrete footpaths of the city through the towering canyons of the buildings and never noticed when the sheer cliffs of brick and masonry diminished and disappeared altogether, and the footpath led into a ramp then on to the spidery steel skeleton that was the bridge linking two states.
I climbed to the hump in the middle and stood there leaning on the handrail with a butt in my fingers, watching the red and green lights of the boats in the river below. They winked at me and called in low, throaty notes before disappearing into the night.
Like eyes and faces. And voices.
I buried my face in my hands until everything straightened itself out again, wondering what the judge would say if he could see me now. Maybe he'd laugh because I was supposed to be so damn tough, and here I was with hands that wouldn't stand still and an empty feeling inside my chest.”

Mickey Spillane book One Lonely Night

One Lonely Night (1951)

Life , Cars , Feeling , Solitude

“Prosperity and penury do not turn on gyno-centric and gay matters. But leftist statists and libertarians of the left place these wedge issues at the forefront of the fight for freedom. […] Every bit as bad as liberals, "libertarian" political operators are prepared to shed political blood over any imagined sign of bigotry.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Beware of Liberals in Libertarian Drag" http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/beware-of-liberals-in-libertarian-drag/ WorldNetDaily.com, November 7, 2013.
2010s, 2013

Imagination , Freedom , Fight

“Narrated Aisha: I bought a cushion having pictures on it. When Allah’s Apostle saw it, he stopped at the gate and did not enter. I noticed the signs of hatred (for that) on his face! I said, "O Allah’s Apostle! I turn to Allah and His Apostle in repentance! What sin have I committed?" He said, "What about this cushion?" I said, ‘I bought it for you to sit on and recline on." Allah’s Apostle said, "The makers of these pictures will be punished (severely) on the Day of Resurrection and it will be said to them, ‘Make alive what you have created.’" He added, "Angels do not enter a house in which there are pictures."”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 72, Number 844

Angels , Housing

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us…. And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?

It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227

Men , Faith , Way , Soul

“Luli turned out to be uncompromising and brilliant. She could prosecute honey before a jury of bears and win.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 21)

“Yeah, just recently Ted Lilly was pitching in the first inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he slipped twice on two bunt plays. Anyways, Lou [Piniella] came out to check on him and asked him if he had his metal spikes on and he did. Lou then said well do you have any other cleats in the locker room and Ted said, "Skip, your zippers down." Lou was really embarrassed about that. He turns to do something about it, but then realized that he was on national TV and realized he couldn't do anything. That was a very awkward, but funny story.”

Michael Barrett (1976) baseball catcher and manager

“Jack: You'll have to compromise, smile, concern yourself with your public image, measure your words as carefully as possible… and turn yourself into a dutiful party hack! [chuckles] Never mind, Nigel, never mind.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Jack Hay was based on Ron Brewer, who had been Potter's agent when he was Labour candidate for East Hertfordshire in the 1964 general election.
Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton (1965)

Smile

“Radical Protestants have always been concerned for the inwardly authentic quality of personal experience and commitment. From this perspective one judges the run-of-the-mill piety which is satisfied with conformity to easily attained patterns of expression. This critical perspective on hypocrisy and superficiality presupposes a more authentic alternative, which is very difficult to define. Once it is clearly defined, that new, more authentic form becomes inauthentic in its turn; yet that kind of preoccupation always belongs as part of the radical Protestant vision. The "civil religion" is judged for being feasible; its demands are too attainable.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 175

Religion , Parting , Personality

“The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation… claims… the "Whole substance" of the wine is converted into the blood of Christ,; the appearance of wine that remains is "merely accidental", "inhering in no substance". Transubstantiation is colloquially taught as meaning that the wine "literally" turns into the blood of Christ. Whether in its obfuscatory Aristotelian or its franker colloquial form, the claim of transubstantiation can be made only if we do serious violence to the normal meanings of words like 'substance' and 'literally'.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Viruses of the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Appearance , Wine , Christ

“They left no stone unturned in de-Hinduizing or denationalizing the Hindus, in effect de-Indianizing the Indians, in various ways. It is preposterous to question their credentials as true Muslims. Their 'Ulama' exhorted them off and on to make the best of their sword to root out the Hindus and convert India into a full-fledged Dar al-lslam. Sayyid Nur ad-Din Mubarak Ghaznawi Suhrawardi, at once a leading Sufi, a leading Muslim divine, and the Shaykh al-lslam of Sultan Iltutmish. led a deputation of Ulama to the Sultan and advised him to give an ultimatum to the Hindus to embrace Islam or face death. The Sultan’s prime minister pleaded powerlessness on his behalf to do so." Then the Shaykh offered an alternative suggestion: ’… the king should at least strive to disgrace, dishonour, and defame the Mushrik and idol- worshipping Hindus…. The sign of the kings being protectors of the faith is this: When they see a Hindu, their faces turn red and they wish to swallow him alive….' A similar suggestion was made to Jalal ad-Din Khalji, who returned ruefully: 'Don’t you see that Hindus, who are the worst enemies of God and of Islam, pass daily below my royal palace to the Jamuna beating drums and playing flutes, and practise before our eyes the worship of the idols with all the rituals? Fie on us unworthy leaders who declare ourselves Muslim kings!… Had I been a Muslim ruler, a real king, or a prince and felt myself strong and powerful enough to protect Islam, any enemy of God and the faith of the Prophet of Islam would not have been allowed to chew betels in a care-free manner and put on a clean garment or live in peace. Qadi Mughis ad- Din’s advice to Sultan Ala' d-Din Khaiji was on similer lines, and the Sultan confessed that he had humiliated and pauperized the Hindus to his utmost even though without caring to know the provisions of the Shari'ah on the subject.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions (1990)

Death , God , Peace , Faith

“Or as Flight of the Conchords put it: “They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers. But what’s the real cost? ’Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper. Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got them made by little slave kids? What are your overheads?””

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

“The problem with alchemy wasn’t that the alchemists had failed to turn lead into gold—no one could do that. The problem, rather, was that the alchemists had failed uninformatively. As a group, the alchemists were notably reclusive; they typically worked alone, they were secretive about their methods and their results, and they rarely accompanied claims of insight or success with anything that we’d recognize today as documentation, let alone evidence. Alchemical methods were hoarded rather than shared, passed down from master to apprentice, and when the alchemists did describe their experiments, the descriptions were both incomplete and vague. As Boyle himself complained of the alchemists’ publications, “Hermetic Books have such involved Obscuritys that they may justly be compared to Riddles written in Cyphers. For after a Man has surmounted the difficulty of decyphering the Words & Terms, he finds a new & greater difficulty to discover the meaning of the seemingly plain Expression.””

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Secret , Books , Problem , Success

“Public opinion* is the unseen product of education and practical experience. Education, in turn, is the function, in co-operation, of the family, the church and the school. If the family fails in its guiding influence and discipline and if the church fails in its religious instruction, then everything is left to the school, which is given an impossible burden to bear. It is just this situation which has arisen in the United States during the generation through which we are still passing. In overwhelming proportion, the family has become almost unconscious of its chief educational responsibility. In like manner, the church, fortunately with some noteworthy exceptions, has done the same. The heavy burden put upon the school has resulted in confused thinking, unwise plans of instruction and a loss of opportunity to lay the foundations of true education, the effects of which are becoming obvious to every one. Fundamental dis cipline, both personal and social, has pretty well disappeared, and, without that discipline which develops into self-discipline, education is impossible.
What are the American people going to do about it? If they do not correct these conditions, they are simply playing into the hands of the advocates of a totalitarian state, for that type of state is at least efficient, and it is astonishing to how many persons efficiency makes stronger appeal than liberty.
Then, too, we have many signs of an incapacity to understand and to interpret liberty, or to distinguish it from license. There is a limit to liberty, and liberty ends where license begins. It is very difficult for many persons to understand this fact or to grasp its implications. If we are to have freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of the press, why should we not be free to say and think and print whatever we like? The answer is that the limit between liberty and license must be observed if liberty itself is to last. To suppose, as many individuals and groups seem to do, that liberty of thought and liberty of speech* include liberty to agitate for the destruction of liberty itself, indicates on the part of such persons not only lack of common sense but lack of any sense o humor. If liberty is to remain, the barrier between liberty and license must be recognized and observed.”

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

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

People , Education , School , Family

“Translated After Hitler, our turn.”

Ernst Thälmann (1886–1944) leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much of the Weimar Republic

Nach Hitler kommen Wir.
Ernst Thälmann (1931), cited in: Michelle Goldberg. " After Trump, Our Turn! http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/03/29/susan_sarandon_is_perfect_spokeswoman_for_neverhillary.html" at slate.com, March 29, 2016.
Quote is about Thälmann's refusal to oppose the Nazis in the 1932 German election helped bring them to power. It was quoted by Goldberg (2016) as historical precedent for leftists refusing to oppose Donald Trump as US President.
The English quote is mentioned in over 30 publications, mostly as a communist slogan around 1930, yet only 4 publications actually attributed the quote to Ernst Thälmann. The original quote is mentioned in numerous publications.
Disputed

“Life invented it first, Zoe thought, like so many other things. Like eyes: Turning photon impacts into neurochemical events with such subtlety that a frog can target a fly and a man can admire a rose.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Bios

Source: Bios (1999), Chapter 25 (p. 194)

Life , Flying

“There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Food , Beauty , Sense , Clothes

“In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, … the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 52.

Truth , Idea

“You gave me your mud and I have turned it to gold.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Tu m’as donné ta boue et j’en ai fait de l’or.
"Ébauche d’un épilogue pour la 2e édition," Les Fleurs du Mal (1861), Appendice II: Autres pièces http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal_-_Ebauche_d'un_%C3%A9pilogue_pour_la_2e_%C3%A9dition

“When friends speak overmuch of times gone by, often it's because they sense their present time is turning them from friends to strangers. Long before the moment came to say goodbye, I think, we said goodbye in other words and ways and silences. Then when the moment came for it at last, we didn't say it as should be said by friends. So now at last, dear Mouse, with many, many years between: goodbye.”

Frederick Buechner book Godric

Godric (1980)

Way , Thinking , Sense , Silence

“The thing about opium is that it makes you vomit. You cook the original raw sticky pellet against the bowl of the pipe. And for the first three or four months, you puke. But it’s a clean very easy puke, not like alcohol. You could be walking down the street talking to a friend, turn, puke and keep going. But you do that a lot for the first few months. It takes devotion to become an addict to opium and heroin. You have to keep doing it to get through it. I lost a lot of weight. But the payback is huge. It is pure pleasure. There is a reason why opiates are used as a painkiller: they make you feel better. They’re designed to make you feel better.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

Alcohol , Pleasure , Feeling , Cooking

“He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.”

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

1960s, The Drum Major Instinct (1968)

People , World , Clothes , Dead

“It is not so much then for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Justice , Law , Confidence , Knowledge

“I asked a thief to steal me a peach:
He turned up his eyes.
I asked a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek, she cries.

As soon as I went
An angel came.
He winked at the thief
And smiled at the dame—

And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree,
And still as a maid
Enjoyed the lady.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

I Asked a Thief
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Lie , Smile , Angels , Tree

“Nobody can valuate without devaluating, revaluating, and serving one’s interests. Whoever sets a value, takes position against a disvalue by that very action. The boundless tolerance and the neutrality of the standpoints and viewpoints turn themselves very quickly into their opposite, into enmity, as soon as the enforcement is carried out in earnest. The valuation pressure of the value is irresistible, and the conflict of the valuator, devaluator, revaluator, and implementor, inevitable.”

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) German jurist, political theorist and professor of law

"The Tyranny of Values" (1959)

“The CRG turned its thoughts towards a much more complex matter that had received little attention from any of the other schools of thought which had been represented at the two Conferences [Dorking and ICSI]. This is the relation between general and special classifications: is there anything to be gained by pursuing the ideal of a new universal classification scheme, and if so, how will the specialist's need be served by it? How can the CRG schemes, for example, that prove so satisfactory for their users, be integrated into such a general scheme?”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Source: The Classification Research Group 1952—1962 (1962), p. 133 as cited in:

School , Universe

“The irony is that the healthier Western society becomes, the more medicine it craves… Immense pressures are created – by the medical profession, by the media, by the high pressure advertising of pharmaceutical companies to expand the diagnosis of treatable illnesses. Scares are created, people are bamboozled into lab tests, often of dubious reliability. Thanks to diagnostic creep or leap, ever more disorders are revealed, extensive and expensive treatments are then urged … [This] is endemic to a system in which an expanding medical establishment, faced with a healthier population, is driven to medicalising normal events, converting risks into diseases and treating trivial complaints with fancy procedures… The law of diminishing returns necessarily applies. Extending life becomes feasible, but it may be a life exposed to degrading neglect as resources grow overstretched. What an ignominious destiny if the future of medicine turns into bestowing meagre increments of unenjoyed life?”

Roy Porter (1946–2002) British historian

Roy Porter as cited in: " The cost of chronic disease and the lack of NHS reform http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-cost/" at abetternhs.wordpress.com. Posted on May 16, 2011

Life , People , Disease , Law

“All the real money in investment will have to be made—as most of it has been in the past— not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 17

Wisdom , Money , Past

“The dominant social thought shapes the institutionalized order of society… and the malfunctioning of established institutions in turn alters social thought.”

Theodore Schultz (1902–1998) American economist

Theodore W. Schultz (1977) In: Cambridge University Marshall Lecture – Development and Transition: Idea, Strategy, and Viability, Justin Yifu Lin, PDF http://www.eaber.org/intranet/documents/41/1822/CCER_Lin_2007.pdf,

“Depraved these styles are called, the one with its ever broken and twisted mouldings, the other with its rich crowded carving, and depraved we may count them, if we are of the school that thinks the purpose of architectural ornament is always to state some fact of construction. The Mexican architects and their workmen were certainly not of this school. They broke their mouldings, turned and curved them and multiplied their ornament for the pure joy it gave them to see the sparkle of the sunlight on their white walls.”

Clarence Stein (1882–1975) American architect

A Triumph of Spanish Colonial Style (1916)

School , Thinking , Joy

“There are benefits to be gained from the ambiguities of scientific discourse. Of the four previously identified functions served by ambiguity, two remain outside the boundaries of scientific work. The function of attaining enlightenment through the intuition of indeterminacy belongs to mysticism, or perhaps to philosophy and poetry, not to the disciplined activity of science. And the protection of one's meanings and intentions through ambiguously opaque utterance, while perhaps useful as a protective ploy in scientific competition, cannot be sanctioned as appropriate conduct for a scientific enquirer. Through its two other functions, however — the evocative representation of complex meanings and the bonding of a community through diffuse symbols — ambiguity has long served and will continue to serve the general objectives of scientific activity. It is useful for scientific formulations to express an abundance of meanings, for these can ignite a cluster of insights that in turn lead to novel explorations.”

Donald N. Levine (1931–2015) sociologist

Donald N. Levine (1988), The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory. p. 218; Partly cited in: David L. Sills, ‎Robert King Merton (2000), Social Science Quotations: Who Said What, When, and Where. p. 129-130

Communication , Science

“Lying on my hotel bed, mesmerized by the lazy turns of the ceiling fan, I pondered the possibility that I was nuts. It wasn’t unheard of, even in the days of the Bitchun Society, and even though there were cures, they weren’t pleasant.”

Cory Doctorow book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003)

Lying

“When you are poor you don’t have any social respect or social worth because everything is defined in terms of money and how much of it you have. This is what capitalism does. It turns all values into commercial values, even the value of life itself.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

Life , Money

“Naked power has its limitations, since power is a generator of corruption and corruption in its turn tends to dilute the effectiveness of power.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Corruptions of Our Time, p. 248
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

“This greatly disturbed the minds of many sisters, and some brethren. The brethren stared and turned pale, and the sisters cried, Sister Howe, in particular, was very much terrified; "Oh, dear me!" said she, "what shall we do? what shall we do? The keys of the kingdom are taken from us, and what shall we do?…. I tell you again," said Sidney, with much feeling, "the keys of the kingdom are taken from you, and you never will have them again until you build me a new house."”

Lucy Mack Smith (1775–1856) American religious leader

The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother (1853), "Rigdon's Depression"

Feeling , Sister , Housing

“Occasionally discouragement may darken our pathway; frustration may be a constant companion. In our ears there may sound the sophistry of Satan as he whispers, "You cannot save the world; your small efforts are meaningless. You haven’t time to be concerned for others." Trusting in the Lord, let us turn our heads from such falsehoods and make certain our feet are firmly planted in the path of service and our hearts and souls dedicated to follow the example of the Lord. In moments when the light of resolution dims and when the heart grows faint, we can take comfort from His promise: "Be not weary in well-doing. … Out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind."”

Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018) president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Finding Peace, Ensign, Mar. 2004, 3.

World , Soul , Effort , Light

“It was mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence, wherein the mind appears to play only with itself, that turned out to be the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe that are concealed by appearances.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 7.

Law , Mathematics , Nature , Universe

“At 15 years of age, I was 6’3” tall, with a very low voice that brought attention to me - often. As a result, I was very self- conscious, to say the least. My mother took me to a dramatic coach in Hollywood to help me overcome my self-consciousness. On the very first meeting, she gave a magazine to me to read out-loud for 15 minutes, while standing on a raised platform. Afterward the coach, Ruth Bowes, turned to my mother and said, “Your son has every quality to become a great actor.””

Rex Reason (1928–2015) American actor

Age , Reading , Help

“.. these reproductions were in Zwemmer's bookshop [in the 1920's]. I can see them now. They were black. There was one on Negro sculpture, one on Mexican sculpture, one on an Egyptian sculpture, and so on. And all these I knew. And in one of them was this small reproduction of the Chac Mool [famous Toltec-Maya sculpture]. It was the pose that struck me – this idea of a figure being on its back and turned upwards to the sky instead of lying on its side, which is a different sort of idea from the Renaissance, or Greek reclining figure, which is usually on its side. And this gave me all sorts of chances of making variations on it.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote from The Donald Caroll interviews, Talmy Franklin, London 1973, p. 377
1970 and later

Lying , Idea , Chance

“Charles Laughton is superbly vulgar in this whack at the backside of Victorianism. He makes a great vaudeville turn out of the role of an egocentric scoundrel, the prosperous bootmaker who doesn't want to part with his three marriageable daughters because they are too useful as unpaid labor. As the oldest daughter, the spinster in spite of herself, Brenda de Banzie is so "right" that when she marries her father's best workman and puts belching, drunken old Dad out of business, one feels the good old-fashioned impulse to applaud.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"Hobson's Choice," pp. 335-336.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

Marriage , Feeling , Fashion , Business

“[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history’s dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson’s estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt’s anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 8).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

War , School , Law , History

“When I pray, I'm not just telling God my problems, but rather I'm turning over my biggest concerns to him. It's only when I've put them in his capable hands that I can go about my day in his strength and freedom.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God , Problem , Freedom

“I was walking down by the river. I lay down under a tree. I was broke. I felt pretty low. Then I looked up at the sky—all blue except for one little, white, fleecy cloud. The words came to me for the song—quicker than it's taking me to tell it to you. I got up—and I had new hope. That was the turning point in my life.”

Johnnie Ray (1927–1990) American singer, actor, songwriter and composer

On writing "The Little White Cloud That Cried", The Chicago Tribune (16 March 1952)

Life , Hope , Tree

“It turns out that the Romans were champs in making peace. Their motto was that if you want to make peace, you need to prepare for war. They knew game theory.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

Quoted by Elad Benari in The Frantic Desire for Peace Only Brings War.
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140029#.VDs8U_ldUa4

War , Peace , Game

“You are suffering from the unrestricted imports of cheaper goods. You are suffering also from the unrestricted immigration of the people who make these goods. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)…The evils of immigration have increased during recent years. And behind those people who have already reached these shores, remember there are millions of the same kind who, under easily conceivable circumstances, might follow in their track, and might invade this country in a way and to an extent of which few people have at present any conception. The same causes that brought 10,000 and 20,000, and tens of thousands, may bring hundreds of thousands, or even millions. (Hear, hear.) If that would be an evil, surely he is a statesman who would deal with it in the beginning. (Hear, hear.)…When it began we were told it was so small that it would not matter to us. Now it has been growing with great rapidity, it has already affected a whole district, it is spreading into other parts of the country…Will you take it in time (hear, hear), or will you wait, hoping for something to turn up which will preserve you from what you all see to be the natural consequences of such an invasion? …it is a fact that when these aliens come here they are answerable for a larger amount of crime and disease and hopeless poverty than are proportionate to their numbers. (Cheers.) They come here—I do not blame them, I am speaking of the results—they come here and change the whole character of a district. (Cheers.) The speech, the nationality of whole streets has been altered; and British workmen have been driven by the fierce competition of famished men from trades which they previously followed. (Cheers.)…But the party of free importers is against any reform. How could they be otherwise?…they are perfectly consistent. If sweated goods are to be allowed in this country without restriction, why not the people who make them? Where is the difference? There is no difference either in the principle or in the results. It all comes to the same thing—less labour for the British working man.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Cheers.
Speech in Limehouse in the East End of London (15 December 1904), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain In The East-End.’, The Times (16 December 1904), p. 8.
1900s

Men , People , Disease , Hope

“White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in its turn, gives support to white prejudice. White prejudice and Negro standards thus mutually ‘cause’ each other.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 75

Health , Education , Support

“I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.”

William Morris book A Dream of John Ball

Source: A Dream of John Ball (1886), Ch. 4: The Voice of John Ball

Men , Fight

“Poor Pymfyd! Your world is built of fear and dread! As for me, I have no time for such emotions.”
Pymfyd spoke in an even voice. “You are a royal princess and I may not call you a witless little fool, even should the thought cross my mind.”
Madouc turned him a sad blue-eyed glance. “So that, after all, is your concept of me.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

“I will say only this: persons who fear nothing are soon dead.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 3, section 3 (p. 722)

World , Sadness , Fear , Fools

“Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman, pp. 57-58
Paper Towns (2008)

Life , People , Beauty , Drink

“The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators. I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.”

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) American artist

Quotes of Sol Lewitt
Source: Art Institute of Chicago. Video Data Bank (1992), On Art and Artists. p. 1991

“When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

Men

“The third element alone remains — the institution itself, acting in such a way as to make social acts a state of habit and instinct. This element — history proves it — has never missed its aim, never has it acted as a double-bladed sword; and its influence has only been weakened when custom strove to become immovable, crystallized, to become in its turn a religion not to be questioned when it endeavored to absorb the individual, taking all freedom of action from him and compelling him to revolt against that which had become, through its crystallization, an enemy to progress.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Religion , Way , History , Question

“I got my wife breast implants for her birthday. I've never been a big fan of plastic surgery, but I gotta admit, I've had a lot of fun playing with these things. I haven't given them to her yet…[Audience cheers] I just keep 'em on my tour bus and just rub 'em in my face…I'm glad they clean up easy. [Audience groans] WHAT?! I'm just glad they are not made out of corduroy, that's all I'm saying! I'd have to have 'em Scotchgarded. [imitates spraying Scotchgard on implants] I find it a little ironic that the product that I use to keep from ruining my sofa should spill my drink on it is actually called…Scotch-guard. [Audience cheers] Sometimes, things just work out perfect, don't they? "Yeah, I'm looking for a product that'll protect my sofa should I spill my Scotch on it. What'd ya have?" [imitates clerk turning to look at stock] "We've got Scotch-guard." "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you have Vodka-guard? How about Sperm-guard?"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

It's a busy couch.
Behavioral Problems

Birthday , Drink , Business , Perfection

“You need one of those slave-driving old studio bosses if you ask me, not a sensitive graduate who went into movies because he liked the clouds in Antonioni and then turned himself into a nouvelle vague Deutscher all hot for Truthspiel.”

Julian Barnes book A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Page 194.
See wikipedia on Michelangelo Antonioni.
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989)

“Whether it be in the toleration of sharia courts, or the turning of a blind eye to cultural practices which go against our laws, too often it has been women who have been the victims of those problems. I have always believed that a multi-ethnic society such as ours can be successful if it can be united by a common set of values and sense of identity, instead of a constant emphasis on division. It’s amazing to think that this was once considered outlandish. It can be difficult to explain this crucial difference in a city like London. More than one TV interviewer has asked me how, as UKIP’s Mayoral candidate, I can appeal to such a multicultural place as our capital. But this is to miss the point entirely. Like anybody else, I enjoy the huge profusion of completely diverse cuisine, fashion and music. Indeed the different cultural influences on our city are so big and ingrained it’s easy to take them for granted. But this is not the same thing as ensuring and, indeed, standing up for the common values and laws which should and must underpin any cohesive society. Here, as across Europe, one of those values – enshrined in our legal system – is that everybody is equal before the law regardless of their gender, sexuality or ethnicity.”

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

‘Cultural Cringe’: Women Are The First Victims Of State-Sponsored Multiculturalism http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/13/2764329/ (January 13, 2016)

Women , Law , Music , Fashion

“The hand of God never tires, nor are its movements aimless. It makes all things subservient to its designs, and, at every turn, disappoints the calculations of man, causing the most insignificant events to expand to the mightiest consequences, while those that have the appearance of mountains vanish into nothing.”

John Lanahan (1815–1903)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 284.

God , Disappointment , Mountain , Appearance

“The sciences of today are business enterprises run on business principles. Research in large institutes is not guided by Truth and Reason but by the most rewarding fashion, and the great minds of today increasingly turn to where the money is - which means military matters.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 102.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

Money , Truth , Fashion , Business

“If Walter Bagehot was right that “one of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea,” Ken caused an extraordinary amount of pain. Both in his economic thinking and in his political activities, he was dedicated to resisting, and where possible overturning, what he famously called “conventional wisdom” (one of his many turns of phrase that have since become commonplace locutions). Rejecting the standard economic theory based on small, anonymous households and firms that autonomously engage in perfectly functioning markets, Ken instead saw an economic stage dominated by large, nameable actors: big business, big labor, big government. Sorting out their roles and respective power was central to his analysis, and the continually shifting tensions in the interplay among them—“countervailing power” in another of his deft phrases—was the real story of how an economy behaved.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Stephen A. Marglin, Richard Parker, Amartya Sen, and Benjamin M. Friedman, “John Kenneth Galbraith”, Harvard Gazette (February 7, 2008)
2000s

Wisdom , Pain , Idea , Business

“Personally, I never met Knut Wicksell. I saw him once when he delivered a lecture in Oslo, but being an unassuming student at the time, I did not have the courage to talk to him. So my knowledge of his theory came only through his writings. That, however, was a very intense and absorbing form of making his acquaintance. Already from my early student days, I read his writings (in German and Swedish) avidly. And I continued to do so later.
When I started my study on Wicksell, I found that his works were not easy reading. Often it was only at the third or fourth reading that I grasped his ideas. Invariably, each new reading made me more and more enthusiastic. Sometimes it happened that I thought I had finally caught him in an inconsistency or in unclear thinking. Every time this happened, it turned out, however, that the error was mine.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Frisch (1952) " Frish on Wicksell http://www.sv.uio.no/econ/om/tall-og-fakta/nobelprisvinnere/ragnar-frisch/published-scientific-work/Scan1.pdf" p. 654
1940-60s

Error , Idea , Courage , Knowledge

“Comets encountering these precincts must be perplexed to decide between the two potentates claiming their allegiance, and perhaps on occasions pay their court to each in turns, throwing out tails, as they do so, in all sorts of anomalous and contradictory directions.”

Agnes Mary Clerke book The System of the Stars

Of the nature of any planetary system round the double star Alpha Centauri; p. 168.
The System of the Stars (1890)

“She's online with her friends, and little boys are starting to call the house. Oh, my God, we had a kid call the house at two in the morning. Oh, I lost it. 'Cause first of all, I'm off in La-la land with Shania Twain in the mountains somewhere. I hear a phone ring and I'm like "Who's got a phone in the mountains??" So when I realize it's my phone, I'm already a little miffed, so I go, "Hello!" And this little voice says "Uh... is Emily there?" And I go, "Dude, if you have a brain in your skull, you will hang this phone up right now!" Click. Then my wife turns to me and goes, "Bill, you've got to be nice."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

And I go, "No, ma'am. "Nice" stops at midnight!"
Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie (2003)

God , Mountain , Boy , Housing

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life , Money , God , Pleasure

“Deception, in turn, suggests morality: the morality of deceiving people into thinking something is so when it is not. […] The moral principle is this: whoever attempts to tame a part of a wicked problem, but not the whole, is morally wrong.”

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

Source: 1960s - 1970s, Guest editorial: Wicked problems (1967), p. 142 cited in: Rob Hundman (2010) Weerbarstig veranderen. p. 38

People , Problem , Thinking , Parting

“We flow, we descend, we turn... and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air...”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Light

“Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

298
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Men , God , Way , Universe

“Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Tear , Laughter , Water

“80: Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“It is always a matter of regret from the personal point of view when divergences arise between colleagues, but it is the team that matters and not the individual, and I am quite happy about the strength and the power of the team, and so I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local difficulties, and then turn to the wider vision of the Commonwealth.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

"Mr Macmillan sets out", The Times, 8 January 1958, p. 8
Statement to the press at Heathrow Airport, 7 January 1958. Macmillan was refusing to postpone a Commonwealth tour despite the resignation of the entire Treasury team of ministers.
1920s-1950s

Personality , Happiness

“My lunar sign is in Virgo. Every month when the moon is full, I'm driven to balance my checkbook and straighten up my apartment. I can't help myself. Instead of a werewolf I turn into an accountant.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Help

“You can't shut me up with your cynicism. I warn you- you must realise in time that you are not a mighty despot before whom everyone trembles. I do not tremble before you, I will fight you if you force me to it. I have not forgotten how despicably you treated our old friend, Abel [Yenukidze]. Never did you have a finer friend than Abel and you will never have a truer one. Yet, you caused Abel more harm and hardship than anyone else would do to an enemy. I have not forgiven you that two years ago you turned Abel out of the Kremlin although you had told him, and the people, that he was to become President of the Trans-Caucasian Republics.”

Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze (1886–1937) Soviet politician

To Stalin. Quoted in "The private life of Josef Stalin"‎ - Page 108 - by Jack Fishman, Joseph Bernard Hutton, J. Bernard Hutton - 1962

People , Time , Fight

“It is possible, after all, to 'fake' the 'realest' possible 'evidence' of heterosexuality: man or woman, one can participate in heterosexual marriage and even help produce a brood of spawn and still 'turn out' to have been 'living a lie,' to have been 'really' gay or lesbian all along. Precisely because there is no final 'proof' of heterosexuality, heterosexuality must constantly set about trying to prove itself, assert itself, insist on itself. Indeed, as Butler argues, heterosexuality as hegemonic institution is finally nothing more than its own repetitive self-insistence, nothing other than 'a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations' (Bodies 125). Or, as Janet E. Halley puts it in regard to legalistic constructions of heterosexuality, normative heterosexuality 'is a highly unstable, default characterization for people who have not marked themselves or been marked by other as homosexual.”

Calvin Thomas (critical theorist) (1956) American academic

As Halley continues: 'The resulting class of heterosexuals is a default class, home to those who have not fallen out of it.'
Source: Straight with a Twist (2000), p. 28.

Marriage , People , Lie , Home

“My skepticism concerning all notions of reconquista is skepticism toward the view that history is restorative. I get older but I do not grow wiser. It is only by shedding skin, by turning pages, by ordering stronger spectacles, by having my hair cut, that I seem to be restoring myself to a circular pattern, that I seem to progress toward youth and capability, though my progress is actually a decline.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Youth , History

“He turned then to Job, again using the King James's version. The translation from the Hebrew was narrower than the Greek but seemed more essential. It was the simple strong prose of men who believed and who were unafraid to name things.”

Alan Judd (1946) British writer

Page 197.
The Noonday Devil (1987)

Men , Strong

“When somebody enrolls, consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe — never permit an "open-minded" approach… If they enrolled, they're aboard, and if they're aboard they're here on the same terms as the rest of us — win or die in the attempt. Never let them be half minded about being Scientologists. … When Mrs. Pattycake comes to us to be taught, turn that wandering doubt in her eye into a fixed, dedicated glare. … The proper instruction attitude is, "We'd rather have you dead than incapable."”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Scientology Policy Letters

Universe , Dead

“Jose Diaz-Balart: Mr. Trump, you know 53,000 hispanics turn 18 years of age in this country every month, born in the country of voting age. 54 million plus hispanics — many feel that what you said when you said that the people who cross the border are rapists and murderers—
Donald Trump: No, no, no! We're talking about illegal immigration and everybody understands that. And you know what? That's a typical case. That's a typical case of the press with misinterpretation. They take a half a sentence, they take a half a sentence, then they take quarter of a sentence and put it all together. It's a typical thing…
Diaz-Balart: I'm not finished with my question.
Trump: No, no! You're finished!”

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

2015-07-23
Crowd Erupts in Applause at How Donald Trump Handles MSNBC Host at Presser: 'You're Finished!'
Oliver Darcy
TheBlaze
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/07/23/crowd-erupts-in-applause-at-how-donald-trump-handles-msnbc-host-at-presser-youre-finished/
2010s, 2015

People , Age , Feeling , Understanding