Quotes about turning (6196 quotes, page 61)

“Land monopoly—in the hands of individuals, corporations or syndicates—is at bottom the prime cause of the inequalities which obtain; which desolate fertile acres turned over to vast ranches and into bonanza farms of a thousand acres, where not one family finds a habitation, where muscle and brain are supplanted by machinery, and the small farmer is swallowed up and turned into a tenant or slave. While in large cities thousands upon thousands of human beings are crowded into narrow quarters where vice festers, where crime flourishes undeterred, and where death is the most welcome of all visitors.”

Timothy Thomas Fortune (1856–1928) American writer and activist

On the phenomenon that would come to be called primitive accumulation of capital, in Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South (1884)

Family , Death

“When business executives are making the artistic decisions and don't understand animation, things can go awry. Now they call in all of the authority figures they can find and hire them – the cost has gone up. The picture may or may not get better, but definitely, it gets more cumbersome. It's like trying to turn around an army of tanks, instead of being able to move lightly on your feet or being able to listen to what's going on inside of you – because that's what's telling you what to do. It gets bogged down.”

Don Bluth (1937) American animator

Interview with Don Bluth https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/13/interview-with-don-bluth-part-1-of-3 (June 13, 2000)

Understanding , Business , Animals , Decision

“I am what I am. I am Christ and Antichrist, God and Satan, Heaven and Hiroshima, Arcadia and Auschwitz.” Smiling devilishly, Sarkos lumbered up to Lovett. “Get it, fat boy? God is a duality. Dr. Jehovah and Mr. Hyde.” He lobbed the bottle cap into his mouth and chewed. “Allow me to tell you a bedtime story. It’s called ‘The Day the Gas Chambers Malfunctioned at Auschwitz.’ On second thought, why bother? You know the plot—the title gives it away—I’m surprised Braverman and Kelvin left it out of their overblown epic. Can you imagine how it feels to be a seven-year-old Jewish child, standing in line with hundreds of other Jewish children, waiting your turn to be thrown alive onto an open fire?”

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

Swallowing the bottle cap, Sarkos swerved toward Martin. “Don’t you see? It’s the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of course God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.”
Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 390; spoken by the Devil, named Jonathan Sarkos in the book)

God , Imagination , Waiting , Smile

“Don’t get testy with me, sir. I am Augustine of Hippo Regius, discoverer of concupiscence. Between my legs hangs the axis on which will turn the brave new world of Christian antieroticism.”

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

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 7 (p. 171)

World

“The mothers of all ages are those who have suffered because others suffered; for each of them, self is less sensitive than the sense of her child. Self is not locked up in the maternal heart, there to be cherished, as it is by the egoist, or to be crushed and silenced, as it is by the Saint. In the mother, self is not lost, but loses all its evil by the passionate personal love that distributes it among sons and daughters. Perfect self-less love would perhaps be distributed through the multitude, but a mother is not perfect: nature has so much use for her—separate, family use—that she cannot let her go free from irrational, indispensable partialities and limitings, even injustices, all serving the turn of the race.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. IV. "The Mother", p. 40

Family , Personality , Silence , Daughters

“A thousand departments of mental and physical activity foster and in turn are fostered by its achievement. People must be governed, and there must be those who govern. Laws must be made, and there must be those who study, and those who execute these laws. People must be taught, and there must be teachers. All these and the Church, the newspaper, the theatre, the fine arts are essential to the completeness of the State, to the happiness and safety of its people; but Commerce is the main stem, or trunk, where they are all branches, supplied with the sap of its far-reaching wealth. It is as necessary to the existence of any nation as blood to the physical man. That country in which trade flourishes is accounted happy, while that in which Commerce droops provokes shaking of heads and prophecies of downfall.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Study , Law , Country , Wealth

“Even without the vaccine, the pandemic's going to end. It's gonna run its course. It's gonna end. They'll go crazy. He said 'without the vaccine' -- watch, it'll be a headline tomorrow. These people are crazy. No, it's running its course. We're rounding the turn. You see the numbers, and we're rounding the turn.”

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

2020s, 2020, October

People

“Seize the day. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die.”

movie Dead Poets Society

John Keating character

“We hallucinate sounds more often than sights. There are auditory mirages, which vanish without trace; auditory illusions that turn out to be something other than they seemed; and, of course, voices that speak to saints, seers, and psychotics, telling them how to act and what to believe.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 4 “Hearing” (p. 180)

“Because most children are highly imaginative, it is supposed by some that to reach maturity we ought to leave imagination behind, like the habit of smearing our faces with jam or chocolate. But an adult in whom imagination has withered is mentally lame and lopsided, in danger of turning into a zombie or a murderer. It is the creative imagination that has given our ruthless bloodthirsty species its occasional gleams of nobility, its hope of rising above the muck it spreads.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 12, p. 305

Imagination , Hope , Children

“The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future — all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

Democracy , Faith , Justice , Time

“If we assume the viewpoint claimed as his own by Lenin and we fear the influence of intellectuals in the proletarian movement, we can conceive of no greater danger to the Russian party than Lenin's plan of organization. Nothing will more surely enslave a young labor movement to an intellectual elite hungry for power than this bureaucratic straightjacket, which will immobilize the movement and turn it into an automaton manipulated by a Central Committee. On the other hand there is no more effective guarantee against opportunist intrigue and personal ambition than the independent revolutionary action of the proletariat, as a result of which the workers acquire the sense of political responsibility and self-reliance.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Leninism or Marxism? (1904)

Sense , Self-confidence , Fear , Personality

“Regarding the constant change of the world, visible to our coarse organs, as well as its dissolution, Buddhism points out that those dissolutions are temporary and periodical; for, according to the principle of evolution guided by the law of individual and collective Karma, the disappearing world will in turn manifest a new world with all its contents, just as our Universe was manifested from the primary substance—matter.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

Universe , World , Law , Change

“One should try to find out what he is going to gain from the Bai'at and why it is necessary to enter into this pledge. Unless one knows what the advantage of a certain thing is and the value it possesses, one cannot appreciate it. It is just as there are various kinds of articles in the house: money-big and small coins-and wood etc. Everything is placed where it belongs, that is, everything will be cared for and looked after according to its value. Small coins will not receive the same care as the big ones. As for the pieces of wood, they will be thrown in a corner. In short, whatever will be a cause of bigger loss will be cared for more than other things. The most important point in Bai'at is Tauba (repentance)which means turning back. It indicates that condition in which man is closely connected with sin, and it is as if sins are the homeland and he is living in this habitation. Tauba means that he is now leaving this homeland. Turning back (Raju') means to adopt piety (to become pious).Leaving one's homeland is indeed a hard thing to do, and it entails thousands of hardships. When a man leaves his home, he feels it very much, then how much more one must be feeling while leaving one's homeland. He leaves every thing, his household belongings, his streets and his neighbours and bazaars (shops) and goes to another country.He does not come back to his old homeland.This is TAUBA.”

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad book Malfoozat

When a man is a sinner, his friends are different from those who are going to be his friends when he adopts Taqwa(fear of God).
The mystics have termed this change as 'death'.
Source: Malfoozat, Vol.1, p.2

Money , Home , Loss , Housing

“[P]rivate enterprise and initiative, willing to take risks in the hope of gain, allowed to function in freedom, have produced the greatest wealth ever know in the history of mankind. And that if you stop this process and turn everything over to government, the activity will slow down, inventiveness will cease, and we shall get not equalization of riches, but equalization of poverty.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 27

Wealth , Hope , History , Freedom

“Upon the Road the hidden stands revealed. Each sees and knows the villainy of each. (I can find no other word, my brother, to translate the ancient word which designates the unrevealed stupidity, the vileness and crass ignorance, and the self-interest which are distinguishing characteristics of the average aspirant.) And yet there is, with that great revelation, no turning back, no spurning of each other, and no shakiness upon the Road. The Road goes forward into day.”

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

Glamour: A World Problem (1950), The Six Rules of the Path (Rules of the Road)

Self-confidence , Stupidity

“The Road is trodden in the full light of day, thrown upon the Path by Those Who know and lead. Naught can then be hidden, and at each turn, a man must face himself.”

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

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), The Six Rules of the Path (Rules of the Road)

Light

“So long as the figures 'now superseded' and the academic projections based upon them held sway, it was possible for politicians to shrug their shoulders. With so much of immediate and indisputable importance on their hands, why should they attend to what was forecast for the end of the century, when most of them would be not only out of office but dead and gone? … It was not for them to heed the cries of anguish from those of their own people who already saw their towns being changed, their native places turned into foreign lands, and themselves displaced as if by a systematic colonisation. For these the much vaunted compassion of the parties and politicians was not available: the parties and the politicians preferred to be busy making speeches on race relations; and if any of their number dared to tell them the truth, even less than the whole truth, about what was happening and what would happen here in England, they denounced them as racialist and turned them out of doors. They could feel safe; for they said in their hearts: 'If trouble comes, it will not be in our time; let the next generation see to it!'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

… The explosive which will blow us asunder is there and the fuse is burning, but the fuse is shorter than had been supposed. The transformation which I referred to earlier as being without even a remote parallel in our history, the occupation of the hearts of this metropolis and of towns and cities across England by a coloured population amounting to millions, this before long will be past denying. It is possible that the people of this country will, with good or ill grace, accept what they did not ask for, did not want and were not told of. My own judgment—it is a judgment which the politician has a duty to form to the best of his ability—I have not feared to give: it is—to use words I used two years and a half ago—that 'the people of England will not endure it'.
Source: Speech to the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives at Carshalton Hall (15 February 1971), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 202-203

Time , Dead , Business , People

“Credulity in arts and opinions... is likewise of two kinds viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the imagination more than the reason are principally three viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy... Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Source: De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623) as quoted by Edward Thorpe, History of Chemistry, Vol. 1, p. 43.

Imagination , Search , Light , Art

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Imagination , Reading , Time , War

“The imbalances of our political, social, cultural, spiritual condition must be turned into revolutionary action to overthrow this corrupt system of dutch colonial exploitation.”

Joceline Clemencia (1952–2011) Curaçaoan writer

Source: Source https://triunfodisablika.wordpress.com/2020/11/29/an-anti-colonial-anthem-joceline-clemencia/

“There is a Path which leads to that which is known as Initiation, and through Initiation to the Perfecting of Man; a Path which is recognized in all the great religions, and the chief features of which are described in similar terms in every one of the great faiths of the world. You may read of it in the Roman Catholic teachings as divided into three parts: (1) The Path of Purification or Purgation; (2) the Path of Illumination; and (3) the Path of Union with Divinity. You find it among the Mussulmans in the Sufi — the mystic — teachings of Islam, where it is known under the names of the Way, the Truth and the Life. You find it further eastward still in the great faith of Buddhism, divided into subdivisions, though these can be classified under the broader outline. It is similarly divided in Hinduism; for in both those great religions, in which the study of psychology, of the human mind and the human constitution, has played so great a part, you find a more definite subdivision. But really it matters not to which faith you turn; it matters not which particular set of names you choose as best attracting or expressing your own ideas; the Path is but one; its divisions are always the same; from time immemorial that Path has stretched from the life of the world to the life of the Divine.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Faith , Religion , Study , Time

“No one knows better than I with forty years' political experience that policy--particularly a revolutionary policy--has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that, especially as Ribbentrop's forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off, you are obliged to avoid the second front [with Russia]. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic. But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment... I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia, and nowhere else... The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them...”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1930s
Source: Letter to Hitler, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm

Democracy , Faith , Friendship , War

“I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being abides
from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned campsites
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."”

Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006) poet

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
Poems, The Layers
Source: "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz
[Click here for video version on YouTube as read by the author https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6xW41EFoA ]

Loss , Night , Heart , Angels

“Hope, I would say, is of two kinds: there is the hope which is a wish-fulfilling fantasy... It can go a long way in sustaining the person in difficult circumstances. It is the kind of hope of Mr Micawber, a famous Charles Dickens character. He was always in dire straits, impecunious, but always living in hope, waiting “for something to turn up.””

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

That kind of hope is astral desire, and will take you, as it took him, through a whole book, but will not of itself do other than sustain your ability to live life from day to day.
Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993)

Way , Waiting , Hope , Personality

“I had always said that when I could see the holes in the hands and feet of Jesus myself then I would consider believing. It was very much a standard line – I wouldn’t take anything on belief, I wanted to see the evidence. On that hillside I looked up at the crucifix and Our Lord was there with the holes in his hands and his feet and in that instant – I wouldn’t say I believed, I wouldn’t say I decided to start believing – in that instant, I knew. I knew that I had been looking all these years without seeing Christ crucified. There he was in front of me and I then knew that God and Jesus Christ were true. My life has been upside down ever since. All my original views were turned upside down. It has cost me quite a few friendships and has probably cost me a political career but I cannot un-know what I now know.”

Rob Flello (1966) British politician (born 1966)

Source: The day my atheist convictions were shattered https://catholicherald.co.uk/rob-flello-the-day-my-atheist-convictions-were-shattered/ (October 16, 2020)

God , Life , Christ , Friendship

“Look—I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand like my dad, they lay in bed wondering, can I keep my health care, can I pay my mortgage. Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise you, I get it.But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don′t look like you or worship the way you do or don′t get their news from the same source as you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person′s shoes—as my mom would say—just for a moment, stand in their shoes. Because here′s the thing about life: there′s no accounting for what fate will deal you.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Family , Soul , Life , Understanding

“[T]ogether we shall write an American story of hope, not fear. Of unity, not division. Of light, not darkness. A story of decency and dignity, love and healing, greatness and goodness.May this be the story that guides us, the story that inspires us, and the story that tells ages yet to come that we answered the call of history, we met the moment. Democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch, but thrived, that America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another, and generations to follow.So, with purpose and resolve, we turn to those tasked of our time, sustained by faith, driven by conviction, and devoted to one another and the country we love with all our hearts. May God bless America and may God protect our troops. Thank you, America.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Democracy , Home , God , Faith

“Journalism is just very structured…One day I turned in a story and [an editor] said to me, ‘You can’t compare inanimate objects with animate objects,’ and I realized I had to leave.”

Thanhha Lai (1965) American children's writer

On why she left journalism in “How former Register reporter Thanhha Lai turned childhood rage into a National Book Award” https://www.orangecoast.com/features/ha/ in Orange Coast Magazine (2012 Feb 11)

Animals

“What does one do when faced with an unknown? Turn away and forget about it? In this case, two factors negated that possibility.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 2. Search and Research

Forgetting

“Editing is a lot about patience and discipline and just banging away at something, turning off the machine and going home at night because you're frustrated and depressed, and then coming back in the morning to try again.”

Thelma Schoonmaker (1940) American film editor

Oscar-winning editor arrives with 'Departed', July 30, 2007, Debruge, Peter, Variety http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969221.html?categoryId=2160&cs=1,

Patience , Home , Night

“If you like to be saint of God, then desire not the things of this world or the next. Empty yourself for God. Turn your face to Him so that He may turn to you and make you His saint.”

Ibrahim ibn Adham (718–776) ascetic Sufi saint

p. 26

World , God , Making love

“But nature could not and cannot ever be constrained into self-improvement by sporadic or even endemic or epidemic cases of slow or swift suicide and slaughter, so long as the premature extinction of the whole human race was not and is not seriously threatened. Threaten this seriously, and she will forthwith become our most obedient humble servant. This is the forcible plan of "strikes" by labour against capital, applied in its utmost extension by man against nature; as you have already mere trades'-unions, organise a universal Man-union, and threaten, if all your demands are not immediately granted, to "strike" living, to "turn out" of human existence, and you will at once bring- the everlasting employer to reason.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part VII, p. 92
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Universe , Self-confidence , Suicide , Nature

“[Nature] turns us out into the world without giving us any choice in the matter; though all other suffrages and freedoms are perfectly insignificant in comparison with that of which we are thus deprived, an effective and enlightened vote on the question: Shall I, or shall I not, be born?”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 62
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

World , Nature , Freedom , Question

“I turn my gaze to the sky, close my eyes creating a set of thoughts with my mind, embrace the feeling that my heart emanates... letting me live a sweet melody of sound inside me.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Rivolgo il mio sguardo al cielo, chiudo gli occhi creando con la mente un insieme di pensieri, abbraccio il sentimento che emana il mio cuore... lasciando vivere dentro me una dolce melodia del suono.
Source: prevale.net

Feeling , Heart

“Turn off your thoughts and feed yourself on music.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Spegnete i pensieri e nutritevi di musica.
Source: prevale.net

Music

“If I am fortunate enough to be confirmed, we will turn the page on hate and close the door on discrimination by enforcing our federal civil rights laws.”

Kristen Clarke American lawyer

8 January 2021 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/08/an-all-star-lineup-doj/

Hate , Law

“You don't choose the time. The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you're willing to live with the knowledge that the chance had passed you by”

Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) United States Senator

Source: Kniha Promised Land

“Today, on this day that is so extraordinarily important for me, I want to say just a few more personal words than usual.
I want to ask for your forgiveness.
For the fact that many of the dreams we shared did not come true. And for the fact that what seemed simple to us turned out to be tormentingly difficult. I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future. I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt.
I turned out to be too naive in something. In some places, problems seemed to be too complicated. We forced our way forward through mistakes, through failures. Many people in this hard time experienced shock.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

1990s, Farewell speech (1999)

Forgiveness , Time , Light , Past

“Friends . . old friends. . .
One sees how it ends.
A woman looks
Or a man tells lies,
And the pleasant brooks
And the quiet skies,
Ruined with brawling
And caterwauling,
Enchant no more
As they did before;
And so it ends
with friends.

Friends . . old friends . . .
And what if it ends?
Shall we dare to shirk
What we live to learn?
It has done its work,
It has served its turn;
And, forgive and forget
Or canker and fret,
We can be no more
As we were before.
When it ends it ends
with friends.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

A Book of Verses (1888)

Forgiveness , Forgetting , Learning

“I don't know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, "Why don't you admit that the hummingbird, the butterfly, and the Bird-of-Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?" And I always say, "Well, when you say that, you've also got to think of a little boy sitting on a riverbank, like here, in West Africa, that's got a little worm, a living organism, that's in its eye and boring through its eyeballs and is slowly turning it blind. The creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm."”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate and so therefore [sic] when I make these films, I prefer to show what I know to be the facts, what I know to be true, and then people can deduce what they will from that.
"Sir David Attenborough" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sir-david-attenborough/, interview with Ed Bradley, CBS News (7 November 2002)

God , People , Boy , Bird

“The carnivorous life is denounced by the tenderer and more enlightened elements of mankind, and so those under indictment begin to rake and scrape to see what they can turn up in vindication of their beloved and imperilled rapacities. They find, happily, that Nature is 'red in tooth and claw,' that man has 'canine teeth,' and that human beings are without the five stomachs of the ruminantia. Of course, man is a carnivorous animal; couldn't be anything else if he wanted to be; would probably peter out if he attempted it; and it is not necessary to try to be anything else, anyway, if he could be, for he is in harmony with the all-wise and perfectly lovely regime of bloody Nature already. Mighty slim pegs on which to suspend a life of crime, considering that their substance is purely imaginary! But sufficient for those who have made up their minds beforehand to be satisfied with whatever there is.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Is Man a Plant-Eater?, pp. 111–112

Nature , Animals , Love , Life

“Furs just as warm and beautiful as murderous sealskin may be made of plush; and vegetal silk as fine and lustrous as ever was spun by the oak-eating babes of Polyphemus can be made of wood. Vegetal leather has been manufactured in London with the polish and durability of calfskin. And when the demand becomes strong enough to turn human attention profitably to the task, foot-wear just as comely and lasting, and more sanitary and comfortable, will be made at even less cost from plant products.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 74–75

Strong , Beauty

“Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer,
I was taken by a photograph of you.
There were one or two I know
That you would have liked a little more,
But they didn't show your spirit quite as true.
You were turning round to see who was behind you
And I took your childish laughter by surprise,
And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

"Fountain of Sorrow"
("Fountain of Sorrow" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaoHbNNK58k
Late for the Sky (1974)

Laughter

“I promised myself in life that I would not stop myself from being surprised and you never know what’s going to surprise you. Some things that seem dull turn out to be the most interesting things so I just open doors and say let’s do it!”

Daniel Kash (1959) Canadian actor

Daniel Kash Interview https://entertainment-focus.com/2013/06/17/daniel-kash-interview/ (June 17, 2013)

Life

“We’ve been amazingly lucky, which is another way of saying we’ve kept our eyes and minds open and responded when something turned up.”

John Brunner book Total Eclipse

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 15 (p. 125)

Way

“Sir, there were other days, when England was the hope of freedom. Wherever in the world a high aspiration was entertained, or a noble blow was struck, it was to England that the eyes of the oppressed were always turned—to this favourite, this darling home of so much privilege and so much happiness, where the people that had built up a noble edifice for themselves would, it was well known, be ready to do what in them lay to secure the benefit of the same inestimable boon for others. You talk to me of the established tradition and policy in regard to Turkey. I appeal to an established tradition, older, wider, nobler far—a tradition not which disregards British interests, but which teaches you to seek the promotion of those interests in obeying the dictates of honour and of justice.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1877/may/07/postponement-of-orders-of-the-day#column_437 in the House of Commons (7 May 1877)
1870s

Home , Justice , Freedom , Happiness

“My friends, a new day has dawned on Ontario! A day of opportunity, a day of prosperity and a day of growth. We’re going to turn this province around, so our children and their children will always be proud to call Ontario home. We will make sure Ontario is the greatest place on Earth to live, to do business and to raise a family. And we will make Ontario once again the engine of Canada.”

Doug Ford (1964) 26th Premier of Ontario

Victory speech the night of the 2018 Ontario general election https://www.macleans.ca/politics/doug-fords-victory-speech-ontario-is-open-for-business-full-transcript/ (7 June 2018)
2018

Family , Home , Making love , Business

“Simply, libertarians do not advocate the initiation of force, fraud, or theft to achieve social or political goals. If you refused to contribute to my favorite charity, and I took your money at gunpoint anyway, I’d be stealing from you. Similarly, if I vote for taxes to force you to contribute to that charity, I’m asking the government to take your money—at gunpoint, if necessary… Wrong doesn’t turn into right, just because the majority agrees to it. Minorities have no protection if they have to depend upon the majority for it.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked, (2012), p. 18

Money , Fraud , Dependency

“Turn off thoughts, limit the stimulus and commitment to achieve your goals.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Spegni i pensieri, limitano lo stimolo e l'impegno per raggiungere le tue mete.
Source: prevale.net

“I was always determined to find just the right book for that one child who maybe was a reluctant reader. I knew there was a book to turn him on to reading. I just had to find it. I do have a special place in my heart for kids who maybe have trouble reading or who just don't want to for various reasons. It's always my goal to write books that will somehow entice them to want to read.”

Debbie Dadey (1959) American children's writer

Children's author Debbie Dadey visiting downtown library to sign books, brainstorm. https://lancasteronline.com/features/entertainment/children-s-author-debbie-dadey-visiting-downtown-library-to-sign/article_bf6e4607-f0ba-5e73-a88f-64c9cb876bb2.html (July 29, 2013)

Reading , Books , Heart

“A woman's kiss turns off rationality and ignites passion.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

From the Quotes http://www.prevale.net/quotes.html page of the official website of Prevale
Original: (it) Il bacio di una donna spegne la razionalità ed accende la passione.
Source: prevale.net

Passion , Kiss

“It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest toall the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Life and Destiny (1913)

Soul , Life , Fear , Death

“The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. In its sight nothing is petty or indifferent. It touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold. We are royal by virtue of it, and like the kings in the fairy tale, we may never lay aside our crowns.
The moral order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Life and Destiny (1913)

Indifference , Life

“Everybody wants a flame, they don’t want to get burnt.
And today is our turn.”

James Blunt (1974) English singer-songwriter

"Bonfire Heart", written by James Blunt and Ryan Tedder
Song lyrics, Moon Landing (2013)

“Saw the world turning in my sheets
And once again, I cannot sleep.”

James Blunt (1974) English singer-songwriter

"Same Mistake"
Song lyrics, All the Lost Souls (2007)

World , Sleep

“God has filled our hearts with desires so vast and so magnificent that nothing in creation is capable of satisfying them. Thus it is that in the hope of finding some pleasure, we attach ourselves to created objects and that we have no sooner possessed and sampled that which we have so ardently desired than we turn to something else, hoping to find what we wanted. We are, then, through our own experience, constrained to admit that it is but useless for us to want to derive our happiness here below from transient things. If we hope to have any consolation in this world, it will only be by despising the things which are passing and which have no lasting value and in striving towards the noble and happy end for which God has created us. Do you want to be happy, my friends? Fix your eyes on Heaven; it is there that your hearts will find that which will satisfy them completely.”

John Vianney (1786–1859) French priest and saint

Do You Want to Be Happy?

Pleasure , God , World , Happiness

““I’m attempting to learn a little Welsh. Its very important to learn about culture of the people. In a sense it feels like I have turned full circle as I was born in a Celtic country.”

George Stack (1946) Irish Roman Catholic archbishop

Archbishop George Stack installed as Archbishop of Cardiff - Special Interview https://rcdow.org.uk/news/new-archbishop-of-cardiff/ (2011)

Country , Sense , Feeling , People

“... I regard it as a cinch that a great nation will in due time be Rome. ... Where is Rome? Where is Britain in its heyday? They all pass and so our turn is bound to come some day.”

Charlie Munger (1924) American business magnate, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist

[Berkshire Hathaway VP Charlie Munger on investing, February 15, 2019, CNBC Television, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peUrLZ24GfM] (quote at 9:22 of 31:45)

Time

“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”

Elizabeth Cheney (1966) American lawyer

[Alex Rogers and Manu Raju, https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/politics/liz-cheney-criticism-trump-big-lie/index.html, Cheney calls out Trump's latest attempt to promote 'BIG LIE' amid criticism from within her own party, cnn.com, May 3, 2021, May 7, 2021]

Lie , Law

“If we succeed not only in keeping France itself quiet, but also in having it plead for peace in Petersburg, this turn of events will weaken the Franco-Russian alliance.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Letter to Rödern (15 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 62

Peace

“When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Study , Anger , Forgetting

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Motivational , Success , Life , Positive

“I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.”

Susan Orlean (1955) American journalist

Wisdom

“Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to the path which nature has marked out for him.”

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

Nature

“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Success , Failure , Effort , Hope

“The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

“Be like the flower, turn your face to the sun.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Flowers , Sun

“All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Feeling , Help , Life , Men

“If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

“Changing the world for the better always comes with pain, with fatigue, with some heavy-hearted feeling of unfairness, with this unbreakable wall. But, as it turns out, there is always a flashlight that will sparkle at some point behind this dark spell, and you just walk towards this light hoping that you can peck a hole in that wall and squeeze your way through it.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

As quoted in "“Fostering Leadership”: online talk with Chulpan Khamatova" in Vladimir Potanin Foundation (7 August 2020) https://www.fondpotanin.ru/en/press/news/fostering-leadership-online-talk-with-chulpan-khamatova/

Pain , Light , World , Change

“As it turned out, imagining the fate of seven billion people was far less emotionally affecting than imagining the fate of one.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 741)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Imagination , People , Fate

“Men and women whisper to each other because they have turned a sacred gesture into a sinful act.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About sex

Women , Men

“Turning an influencer status into a public speaker is much easier than you can imagine.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

Imagination

“We’re rounding the turn,our numbers are incredible.”

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

at a rally on October 26, 2020 according to 89,000 new Covid-19 cases per day. And the worst may be yet to come. https://www.vox.com/21541967/covid-19-record-cases-us-coronavirus-winter-spike-surge
2020, October 2020

“We're not entering a dark winter, we are entering the final turn and the light at the end of the tunnel”

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

Said on October 23, 2020 According to Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace https://www.foxnews.com/shows/fox-news-sunday
2020, October 2020

Light , Winter

“We are weak, watery beings standing in the midst of unrealities; therefore let us turn our minds to the things that are everlasting.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LVIII: On Being

“Existence is made up of little things. Turn off the TV, turn on the music… and make love with life.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) L'esistenza è fatta di piccole cose. Spegnete la TV, accendete la musica... e fate l'amore con la vita.
Source: prevale.net

Love , Music , Life , Making love

“We will propose the concept of a working country, we will turn the country into a construction site again. Creating tens of thousands of jobs every year is a priority. We did it once, we will do it again.”

Robert Kocharyan (1954) second President of Armenia

Excerpts from 2021 keynote speech on formation of 'Armenia' alliance

Country

“Turning to God with the deep of the heart is much better than tiring the organs.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, From the Reality of Faith, 2005]
Ad-Durr an-Nadhīm, p.223.

God , Heart

“Ambition, Rose. It squeezes us into corners and turns out ugly shapes.”

Tim Winton book Cloudstreet

Part 8, section 2 - p.293
Novels, Cloudstreet (1991)

“Darkness taught me always step forward into your life never turn back i am with you. Don't scare to me i will show you the right path. Don't think about your sorrows and worries of life. I will lead you to the light of your life, even if I have to lay fireflies on your path.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Light , Thinking , Life

“Whatever comes from God is impossible for a man to turn back.”

Herodotus (-484–-425 BC) ancient Greek historian, often considered as the first historian

God

“Turn on the news and every conversation is a confrontation.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/biden-celebrates-drop-in-unemployment-even-as-job-growth-weakens-1.1663842 Biden Celebrates Drop in Unemployment Even as Job Growth Weakens

2021, October 2021

“We cannot accept turning perpetrators and those responsible for committing cruel crimes against both innocent people and invaded countries into victims. Together - in the name of those who perished and for the good of our common future - we must preserve the truth.”

Mateusz Morawiecki (1968) Prime Minister of Poland

"Statement by the Prime minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki" https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/statement-by-the-prime-minister-of-poland-mateusz-morawiecki (29 December 2019)

People , Truth , Country , Future

“I have no faith in cats: they are a cold-blooded race; they are the politicians among domestic animals; they care little who is master, or what are the over-turnings, so their pickings are secure; and what are their midnight caucuses but primary meetings?”

Donald Grant Mitchell (1822–1908) American writer

Source: My Farm of Edgewood (1863), P. 49

Cats , Faith , Animals

“You can't rap, my friend
You're white and you're from Fulham
Please put down the mic
there's no way you can fool them
Don't be stupid, you won't get that far
Turn your back on hip-hop, bruv, and go and play guitar”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"You Can't Rap" (song)
("You Can't rap" - Official video on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvCd1Xq0Au4
(+ Lyrics version of "You Can't Rap" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK_3L-9dv_c
Studio albums, What We Made (2007)

Stupidity , Fools , Way