Quotes about turning
page 42

“When dysfunctional self-distraction devolves into delusional self-destruction, neurosis turns into psychosis.”

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 8 “Unrequited Hate” (p. 251)

Gordon R. Dickson photo
Alan Moore photo

“If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.
They're right. It does.
However much you beg it to stop.
It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.
It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life…
All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.
Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.
Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.
And then the world turns…
And somebody falls off…
And oh God it's such a long way down.
Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller…
Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.
We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.
Trying to measure how far we have to fall.
No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives…
Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.
"Time's a great healer."
"At least it was quick.”

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

"The world keeps turning.
Oh Alec—
Alec's dead."
Swamp Thing (1983–1987)

Kate Bush photo

“My excitement
Turns into fright.
All my words fade.
What am I gonna say?
Mustn't give the game away.”

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

Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)

Octavia E. Butler photo
Walter Scott photo
Adi Da Samraj photo
Isabelle Adjani photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Conor Oberst photo

“Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

J.M. Coetzee photo
James K. Morrow photo

“Let us examine the language here. Evidently God is addressing this code to a patriarchy that will in turn disseminate it among the less powerful, namely wives and servants. And how long before these servants are downgraded further still…into slaves, even? Ten whole commandments, and not one word against slavery, not to mention bigotry, misogyny, or war.”

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

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 31: The Covenant" p. 130 (originally published in What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“It is only when social movements have receded into past history… that the Church with pride turns around to claim that it was she who abolished slavery, aroused the people to liberty, and emancipated woman.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

Orson Scott Card photo
Gloria Steinem photo

“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Part 6 : Doing Sixty, p. 270
Moving Beyond Words (1994)

Giacomo Casanova photo
Arun Shourie photo

“And yet, none of this is accidental. As we have seen in the texts that we have surveyed in this book, it is all part of a line. India turns out to be a recent construct. It turns out to be neither a country nor a nation. Hinduism turns out to be an invention – surprised at the word? You won’t be a few pages hence – of the British in the late nineteenth century. Simultaneously, it has always been inherently intolerant. Pre-Islamic India was a den of iniquity, of oppression. Islamic rule liberated the oppressed. It was in this period that the Ganga-Jamuna culture, the ‘composite culture’ of India was formed, with Amir Khusro as the great exponent of it, and the Sufi savants as the founts. The sense of nationhood did not develop even in that period. It developed only in response to British rule, and because of ideas that came to us from the West. But even this – the sense of being a country, of being a nation, such as it was – remained confined to the upper crust of Indians. It is the communists who awakened the masses to awareness and spread these ideas among them.
In a word, India is not real – only the parts are real. Class is real. Religion is real – not the threads in it that are common and special to our religions but the aspects of religion that divide us, and thus ensure that we are not a nation, a country, those elements are real. Caste is real. Region is real. Language is real – actually, that is wrong: the line is that languages other than Sanskrit are real; Sanskrit is dead and gone; in any case, it was not, the averments in the great scholar, Horace Wilson to the House of Commons Select Committee notwithstanding, that it was the very basis, the living basis of other languages of the country; rather, it was the preserve of the upper layer, the instrument of domination and oppression; one of the vehicles of perpetuating false consciousness among the hapless masses.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

“Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”

Jim Elliot (1927–1956) Martyred Christian missionary to Ecuador

Journal excerpt from Shadow of the Almighty (1989) by Elisabeth Elliot, Jim Elliot, Summer 1948

Herbert Marcuse photo

“Ascending modern rationalism, in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes' ego cogitans was to leave the “great public bodies” untouched, and Hobbes held that “the present ought always to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best.” Kant agreed with Locke in justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and in preventing subversion. However, these accommodating concepts of Reason were always contradicted by the evident misery and injustice of the “great public bodies” and the effective, more or less conscious rebellion against them. Societal conditions existed which provoked and permitted real dissociation. from the established state of affairs; a private as well as political dimension was present in which dissociation could develop into effective opposition, testing its strength and the validity of its objectives. With the gradual closing of this dimension by the society, the self-limitation of thought assumes a larger significance. The interrelation between scientific-philosophical and societal processes, between theoretical and practical Reason, asserts itself "behind the back” of the scientists and philosophers. The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought” at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The “cunning of Reason” works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives.”

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 15-16

Democritus photo

“Seek after the good, and with much toil shall ye find it; the evil turns up of itself without your seeking it.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Albert Speer photo
Carrie Underwood photo

“It's the wheel of the world - turning around.”

Carrie Underwood (1983) American country music singer

From Wheel of the World from the album Carnival Ride (2007). [Misattributed: performer not credited as writer.]

Karen Horney photo
George Steiner photo
Francis Picabia photo
Yasunari Kawabata photo

“The train came out of the long border tunnel — and there was the snow country. The night had turned white.”

First lines (as translated by Edward Seidensticker).
Snow Country (1948)

Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Karl Mannheim photo
El Lissitsky photo
William Hague photo
John Updike photo
Frances Kellor photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“A fellow with a great voice shouted, "Hearken now to the words of the President of the Confederate States of America, the honorable Woodrow Wilson." The president turned this way and that, surveying the great swarm of people all around him in the moment of silence the volley had brought. Then, swinging back to face the statue of George Washington- and, incidentally, Reginald Bartlett- he said, "The father of our country warned us against entangling alliances, a warning that served us well when we were yoked to the North, before its arrogance created in our Confederacy what had never existed before- a national consciousness. That was our salvation and our birth as a free and independent country." Silence broke then, with a thunderous outpouring of applause. Wilson raised a bony right hand. Slowly, silence, of a semblance of it, returned. The president went on, "But our birth of national consciousness made the United States jealous, and they tried to beat us down. We found loyal friends in England and France. Can we now stand aside when the German tyrant threatens to grind them under his iron heel?" "No!" Bartlett shouted himself hoarse, along with thousands of his countrymen. Stunned, deafened, he had trouble hearing what Wilson said next: "Jealous still, the United States in their turn also developed a national consciousness, a dark and bitter one, as any so opposed to ours must be." He spoke not like a politician inflaming a crowd but like a professor setting out arguments- he had taken one path before choosing the other. "The German spirit of arrogance and militarism has taken hold in the United States; they see only the gun as the proper arbiter between nations, and their president takes Wilhelm as his model. He struts and swaggers and acts the fool in all regards."”

Now he sounded like a politician; he despised Theodore Roosevelt, and took pleasure in Roosevelt's dislike for him.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 32

Laurie Anderson photo
Henry Adams photo

“I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines … We must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways.”

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

Letter to Elizabeth Cameron (22 January 1899), in J. C. Levinson et al. eds., The Letters of Henry Adams, Volume IV: 1892–1899 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1988), p. 670

George W. Bush photo
James M. McPherson photo
Ilya Prigogine photo

“The denial of becoming by physics estranged science from philosophy… [and] became a dogmatic assertion directed against all those (chemists, biologists, physicians) for whom a qualitative diversity existed in nature… Today we believe that the epoch of certainties and absolute oppositions is over. Physicists belong to their culture, to which, in their turn, they make an essential contribution.”

Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) physical chemist

Cited in: L.P. Foch (1997) " Some Philosophical Influences on Ilya Prigogine's Statistical Mechanics https://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/earleyj/papers/FOCH%20LP7.pdf", at georgetown.edu.
Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (1984)

Enver Hoxha photo
Cynthia Nixon photo

“ICE has strayed so far from its mission. It's supposed to be here to keep Americans safe, but what it's turned into is frankly a terrorist organization of its own that is terrorizing people that are coming to this country.”

Cynthia Nixon (1966) American actress

As quoted in New York Gubernatorial Candidate Cynthia Nixon Calls ICE a 'Terrorist Organization' https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/New-York-Gubernatorial-Candidate-Cynthia-Nixon-ICE-Terrorist-Organization-NYC-486273771.html (June 22, 2018) by R. Darren Price, WNBC

Homér photo
George W. Bush photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo

“You know I can't abide curse-words, but this time I'm going to use one because I am damn tired of hearing what Lee's going to do to us! Start thinking about what we're doing to do to him. Some of you think he's about to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both flanks at the same time.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

North and South, Book II https://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=vopVVBiC80g#General_Grant_s_Strategies (1986).
In fiction, <span class="plainlinks"> North and South, Book II http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090490/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast (1986)</span>

James Comey photo
Seymour Papert photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Brad Paisley photo

“So turn it on, turn it up, and sing a long
This is real; this is your life in a song.
Yeah this is country music.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

This Is Country Music.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)

Johnny Marr photo
Robert Fisk photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Edward R. Murrow photo

“When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

1959, Dons Or Crooners?: Three Lectures on the Subject of Communication in the Modern World, The British Association Granada Lectures, (Three lectures given in Guildhall London in October 1959 on the subject of communication in the modern world), Lecture Title: Television and Politics, Speaker: Edward R. Murrow, Start Page 47, Quote Page 75 and 76, Published by Granada TV, London.

Paul Keating photo

“John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He's at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio, the guy did no thinking.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Referring to former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard, 7.30 Report, August 6, 2008. 7.30 Report Interview http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2326431.htm

P. L. Travers photo

““Myth, Symbol, and Tradition” was the phrase I originally wrote at the top of the page, for editors like large, cloudy titles. Then I looked at what I had written and, wordlessly, the words reproached me. I hope I had the grace to blush at my own presumption and their portentousness. How could I, if I lived for a thousand years, attempt to cover more than a hectare of that enormous landscape?
So, I let out the air, in a manner of speaking, dwindled to my appropriate size, and gave myself over to that process which, for lack of a more erudite term, I have coined the phrase “Thinking is linking.” I thought of Kerenyi — “Mythology occupies a higher position in the bios, the Existence, of a people in which it is still alive than poetry, storytelling or any other art.” And of Malinowski — “Myth is not merely a story told, but a reality lived.” And, along with those, the word “Pollen,” the most pervasive substance in the world, kept knocking at my ear. Or rather, not knocking, but humming. What hums? What buzzes? What travels the world? Suddenly I found what I sought. “What the bee knows,” I told myself. “That is what I’m after.”
But even as I patted my back, I found myself cursing, and not for the first time, the artful trickiness of words, their capriciousness, their lack of conscience. Betray them and they will betray you. Be true to them and, without compunction, they will also betray you, foxily turning all the tables, thumbing syntactical noses. For — note bene! — if you speak or write about What The Bee Knows, what the listener, or the reader, will get — indeed, cannot help but get — is Myth, Symbol, and Tradition! You see the paradox? The words, by their very perfidy — which is also their honorable intention — have brought us to where we need to be. For, to stand in the presence of paradox, to be spiked on the horns of dilemma, between what is small and what is great, microcosm and macrocosm, or, if you like, the two ends of the stick, is the only posture we can assume in front of this ancient knowledge — one could even say everlasting knowledge.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

"What the Bee Knows" in Parabola : The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, Vol. VI, No. 1 (February 1981); later published in What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)

Frank Lloyd Wright photo
River Phoenix photo
William Wordsworth photo

“Turning, for them who pass, the common dust
Of servile opportunity to gold.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Desultory Stanza.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Frida Kahlo photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Maureen O'Hara photo

“I began to rationalize marrying Will[iam Houston Price]. 'He comes from a good family. A girl could do worse.' (As it turned out, I couldn't, but I didn't know that yet)”

Maureen O'Hara (1920–2015) Irish-American film actress and singer

Source: Tis Herself (2004), p.93, on her thinking, before marrying her second husband.

Pierre Hadot photo

“Scientific progress has led philosophers to turn their attention from the explanation of physical phenomena, abandoned to science, in order to direct it towards the problem of being itself.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

Les progrès scientifiques ont amené les philosophes à détourner leur attention de l’explication des phénomènes physiques, abandonnée désormais à la science, pour la diriger vers le problème de l’être lui-même.
La voile d'Isis: Essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de Nature (2004)

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Fritz Leiber photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Bernice King photo

“Our father must be turning in his grave.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Press conference on Nobel Peace Prize and bible sale (2014)

Allan Kardec photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Denis Diderot photo

“The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

"Death"
Elements of Physiology (1875)

Enver Hoxha photo
Timothy Leary photo
Alan Charles Kors photo

“If someone tells you you are too weak to live with freedom, they have turned you into a child”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

As quoted in "College" (2005), Bullshit!, HBO
2000s
Context: What universities are saying by these codes, special protections, and double standards — to women, to blacks, to Hispanics, to gay and lesbian students — is, "You are too weak to live with freedom. You are too weak to live with the First Amendment." If someone tells you you are too weak to live with freedom, they have turned you into a child.

M.I.A. photo

“Google’s more powerful than any government now – people think it’s God. They’re storing all our data and one day they’re going to turn against us.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Quote reprinted http://www.nme.com/photos/in-her-own-words-mias-20-sharpest-quotes/172930/16/4#11 in NME
Sourced quotes

Ron White photo
Ted Cruz photo

“Sometimes at night, I turn on the light so as not to see.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

A veces, de noche, enciendo una luz, para no ver.
Voces (1943)

Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
Billy Connolly photo
Ron Paul photo

“Most often, our messing around and meddling in the affairs of other countries have unintended consequences. Sometimes just over in those countries that we mess with. We might support one faction, and it doesn't work, and it's used against us. But there's the blowback effect, that the CIA talks about, that it comes back to haunt us later on. For instance, a good example of this is what happened in 1953 when our government overthrew the Mossadegh government and we installed the Shah, in Iran. And for 25 years we had an authoritarian friend over there, and the people hated him, they finally overthrew him, and they've resented us ever since. That had a lot to do with the taking of the hostages in 1979, and for us to ignore that is to ignore history… Also we've antagonized the Iranians by supporting Saddam Hussein, encouraging him to invade Iran. Why wouldn't they be angry at us? But the on again off again thing is what bothers me the most. First we're an ally with Osama bin Laden, then he's our archenemy. Our CIA set up the madrasah schools, and paid money, to train radical Islamists, in Saudi Arabia, to fight communism… But now they've turned on us… Muslims and Arabs have long memories, Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and they don't remember our foreign policy that may have antagonized… The founders were absolutely right: stay out of the internal affairs of foreign nations, mind our own business, bring our troops home, and have a strong defense. I think our defense is weaker now than ever.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016
2000s, 2006-2009

Clement Attlee photo
John Stuart Mill photo
John of St. Samson photo