Quotes about use (10000 quotes, page 100)

“The problem of postmodernism - how its fundamental characteristics are to be described, whether it even exists in the first place, whether the very concept is of any use, or is, on the contrary, a mystification - this problem is a t one and the same time an aesthetic and political one.”

Fredric Jameson (1934) American academic

Source: Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), Chapter 2: Theories of the Postmodern

Problem , Time

“Recalling all the erroneous things that doctors have been able to say about sex or madness does us a fat lot of good. I think that what is currently politically important is to determine the regime of verediction established at a given moment … on the basis of which you can now recognize, for example, that doctors in the nineteenth century said so many stupid things about sex. … It is not so much the history of the true or the history of the false as the history of verediction which has a political significance.”

Michel Foucault book The Birth of Biopolitics

Lecture 2, January 17, 1979, p. 36
The Birth of Biopolitics (1978)

Stupidity , Sex , History , Thinking

“This implication of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is pretty radical, so please pause your reading for a moment to take it in and think about it. What you’re aware of right at this moment feels not like a photo but like a movie clip. This movie isn’t reality—it exists only in your head, as part of your brain’s reality model. It contains lots of information about the actual external physical reality—as long as you aren’t dreaming or hallucinating—but still constitutes only a very heavily edited version of reality, akin to the evening news on TV, mainly featuring certain highlights of patterns nearby in space and time that your brain thinks are useful for you to be aware of.”

Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

Dreams , Feeling , Photo , Mathematics

“The titan is tired. We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don't need our friends looking to us to do so.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Titan is Tired,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=599 WorldNetDaily.com, April 29, 2011.
2010s, 2011

Death

“The outcome of today's case will doubtless be heralded as a triumph of judicial statesmanship. It is not that, unless it is statesmanlike needlessly to prolong this Court's self-awarded sovereignty over a field where it has little proper business, since the answers to most of the cruel questions posed are political, and not juridical -- a sovereignty which therefore quite properly, but to the great damage of the Court, makes it the object of the sort of organized public pressure that political institutions in a democracy ought to receive. […] Ordinarily, speaking no more broadly than is absolutely required avoids throwing settled law into confusion; doing so today preserves a chaos that is evident to anyone who can read and count. Alone sufficient to justify a broad holding is the fact that our retaining control, through Roe, of what I believe to be, and many of our citizens recognize to be, a political issue, continuously distorts the public perception of the role of this Court. We can now look forward to at least another Term with carts full of mail from the public, and streets full of demonstrators, urging us -- their unelected and life-tenured judges who have been awarded those extraordinary, undemocratic characteristics precisely in order that we might follow the law despite the popular will -- to follow the popular will. Indeed, I expect we can look forward to even more of that than before, given our indecisive decision today. […] It was an arguable question today whether [Section] 188.029 of the Missouri law contravened this Court’s understanding of Roe v. Wade, and I would have examined Roe rather than examining the contravention. […] Of the four courses we might have chosen today -- to reaffirm Roe, to overrule it explicitly, to overrule it sub silentio, or to avoid the question -- the last is the least responsible. On the question of the constitutionality of [Section] 188.029, I concur in the judgment of the Court and strongly dissent from the manner in which it has been reached.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment), 492 U.S. 490 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/492/490#writing-USSC_CR_0492_0490_ZC1, No. 88-605 ; decided July 3, 1989
1980s

Life , Law , Democracy , Understanding

“By following up this idea, also, we might go a little further. We might arrive at the conviction that our present science is human, petty, and contingent; that it is closely linked with the structure of our sensory organs; that this structure results from the evolution which fashioned these organs; that this evolution has been an accident of history; that in the future it may be different; and that, consequently, by the side or in the stead of our modern science, the work of our eyes and hands—and also of our words—there might have been constituted, there may still be constituted, sciences entirely and extraordinarily new—auditory, olfactory, and gustatory sciences, and even others derived from other kinds of sensations which we can neither foresee nor conceive because they are not, for the moment, differentiated in us. Outside the matter we know, a very special matter fashioned of vision and touch, there may exist other matter with totally different properties. …We must, by setting aside the mechanical theory, free ourselves from a too narrow conception of the constitution of matter. And this liberation will be to us a great advantage which we shall soon reap. We shall avoid the error of believing that mechanics is the only real thing and that all that cannot be explained by mechanics must be incomprehensible. We shall then gain more liberty of mind for understanding what the union of the soul with the body may be.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 43

Error , Soul , History , Idea

“If we choose the easy way, by letting another think for us, we must eventually tread the hard way. If we select the hard way, by insisting upon our own mental integrity, we eventually come to the easy way.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

The Power of Your Supermind

Way , Thinking

“Frankly, this is my position: I have been painting for two years, and my only models have been your [ Monet's ] own works; I have been following the wonderful path you broke for us. I have always worked regularly and conscientiously, but without advice or help, for I do not know any impressionist painter who would be able to guide me, living as I am in an environment more or less hostile to what I am doing. And so I fear I may lose my way, and I beg you to let me see you, if only for a short visit. I should be happy to show you five or six studies; perhaps you would tell me what you think of them and give me the advice I need so badly, for the fact is that I have the most horrible doubts, having always worked by myself, without teacher, encouragement, or criticism.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

In a letter to Claude Monet, 1880; quoted by Geffroy: Claude Monet, vol. I, p. 175; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p. 15
In 1880 an exhibition of the works of Claude Monet had - as Signac was to say later - 'decided his career,' - and after his first efforts as an impressionist Signac had ventured to appeal to Monet, writing him this sentence in his letter

Hostility , Fear , Way , Thinking

“Exploring is fundamentally human; we've done it for thousands of years. It's an expression of something that's the best in us.”

Adam Steltzner (1963) American aerospace engineer

Marc Kaufman. Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission. National Geographic page 18. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.

“I have always criticised violence in my speeches but the way the trouble in just two per cent of the area is blown up and used against us should be countered. Arundhati Roy paints Gujaratis as rapists and then goes scot-free by apologising. Isn't it an insult to Gujarat?”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Way , Painting

“Written history may, in the course of its narrative, use some of the laws established by the various sciences, but its own task remains that of relating the essential sequence of historical action and, qua history, to tell what happened, not why.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: Foundations of Psychohistory (1982), Ch. 2, The Independence of Psychohistory, p. 85.

Law , History , Science

“Humans are proud of themselves. The guiding principle of the modern age is "Man is the measure of all things." And our bodies have excited physiologists and philosophers to a profound awe of the basic mammalian design. But the history of the dinosaurs should teach us some humility… If our fundamental mammalian mode of adaptation was superior to the dinosaurs', then history should record the meteoric rise of the mammals and the eclipse of the dinosaurs. Our own Class Mammalia did not seize the dominant position in life on land. Instead, the mammal clan was but one of many separate evolutionary families that succeeded as species only by taking refuge in small body size during the Age of Dinosaurs. As long as there were dinosaurs, a full 130 million years, remember, the warm-blooded league of furry mammals produced no species bigger than a cat.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 17
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Life , Age , Family , History

“The global warming crowd is using all the surface data, including cities like L. A. to support their claim, and the data is flawed because it's influenced by human development. It's about asphalt, not the atmosphere.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

No proof on global warming, Chico Enterprise-Record, June 10, 2003.
2003

Support

“…it’s important to remember how fortunate we are as a country to have a currency and a bond market that is seen in every way as a source of strength and it’s a huge responsibility for us to keep it that way.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Tom Braithwaite (April 9, 2009) "Summers sees end to ‘sense of free-fall’" http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f4f1ac1c-2537-11de-8a66-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1, Financial Times
2000s

Way , Country

“In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The angels with us unawares.”

Gerald Massey (1828–1907) British poet

Babe Cristabel, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World , Angels

“The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter V

“We all know in our gut that art educates. In other societies, they're aware of the power it has of speaking directly to the masses, teaching them to be better socialists, better citizens. The trouble is that with us it's fallen into the wrong hands. Forget the speculators… The concept of the collector is so rotten by now that it stinks.”

Mary McCarthy book Cannibals and Missionaries

Cannibals and Missionaries (1979)

Education , Art , Forgetting

“Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community rather than of a need to cheat or rape the community.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

Communication , Cheating , Happiness

“Right now, at my institute in the US we are working on gene-caused failures in brain development that frequently lead to autism and schizophrenia. We may also find that differences in these respective brain development genes also lead to differences in our abilities to carry out different mental tasks.
In some cases, how these genes function may help us to understand variations in IQ, or why some people excel at poetry but are terrible at mathematics. All too often people with high mathematical abilities have autistic traits. The same gene that gives some people such great mathematical abilities may also lead to autistic behaviour. This is why, in studying autism and schizophrenia, we believe that we shall come very close to a better understanding of intelligence and, therefore, of the differences in intelligence.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

To question genetic intelligence is not racism (2007)

People , Intelligence , Mathematics , Failure

“So Mac OS X is cross-platform by design, right from the very beginning. So Mac OS X is singing on Intel processors, and I'd just like to show you right now. As a matter of fact… this system I've been using here… Let go have a look… [reveals that the system he had been using for the presentation was running Mac OS X 10.4.1 on a machine using a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 processor] So.. we've been running on an Intel machine all morning.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, WWDC 2005

Singing

“I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comics are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We’re using those things – but we're not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism and terrorism.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

Stupidity , Art , Tree

“Maybe it's because I've never been in politics, but I don't believe that America is run by politicians in Washington. I believe it's run by people like us, in places like this.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

True Values Tour (January 2004)

People

“Nietzsche … criticizes Schopenhauerian aesthetics for not freeing itself from Kant’s moralistic: ‘that is beautiful which gives us pleasure without interest’.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 95

Pleasure , Beauty

“The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 318.

Life , Truth , World , Hope

“The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter … But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.”

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

Letter http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_adams.html to John Adams (11 April 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress) http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/053/0800/0844.jpg
1820s

Truth , Hope , Error , Freedom

“Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of cast-off and everyday clothing.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Source: Little Foxes (1865), Ch. 1.

Life , Home , Strong , Clothes

“Auto-destructive art is conceived as a desperate last-minute subversive political weapon used by artists. It is an attack on the Capitalist system and the production of war materials. It is committed to nuclear disarmament and people's struggle.”

Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) Artist and political activist

Source: Ark, Nr. 30-37, 1962.

War , People , Art

“There has to be a better use for titanium than golf clubs.”

Rob Payne (1973) Canadian writer

Source: Working Class Zero (2003), Chapter 19, p. 154

“Not more knowledge but better use of the knowledge which we now have, is perhaps the main educational need and the main educational problem which confronts us.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Education , Knowledge , Problem

“The modern reading of ancient literature involves a mode of reception that is not merely scholarly or antiquarian. Instead, aesthetic experience allows for a direct relationship between reader and work, despite the historical distance. Today’s consumer cannot participate in the ancient economy by trying to use an Athenian coin as legal tender; but today’s reader can participate in the ancient literary imagination though an authentic engagement with the Homeric text (no matter how much contemporary circumstances necessarily also enter into that encounter with the ancient text). Thus the historicist imperative of periodization evidently stands at odds with the potential for immediacy associated with literary reception and aesthetic experience.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 14.

Imagination , Literature , Reading

“Could this be what people were fighting over, the many possessions that surrounded him? These objects with so much value and so little use? He thought how the sweep of a hand or the lick of a flame and they would be broken and burned. Maybe it was the weak and the fragile and the beautiful that made you the craziest and made you fight the hardest.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Coal Black Horse (2007)

People , Beauty , Fight

“What if criticism is a science as well as an art? Not a "pure" or "exact" science, of course, but these phrases belong to a nineteenth-century cosmology which is no longer with us.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction

Art , Science

“Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to Esquire editor Arnold Gingrich (11 April 1935); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

“The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Gandhi", p. 22. First published in Politics (Winter 1948)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Way

“In Texas, we have the death penalty and we use it! That's right. You come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back! That's our policy. They're trying to pass a bill right now through the Texas legislature that will speed up the process of execution in heinous crimes where there's more than 3 credible eyewitnesses. That means that if three or more people saw you do what you did, you don't sit on Death Row for 15 years, Jack! You go straight to the front of the line. Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. My state's putting in the express lane!”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Death , People , Penalty , Speed

“The proletarian revolution ought now, by a little ray of kindness, to illuminate the gloomy life of prisoners, shorten Draconian sentences, abolish barbarous punishments - the use of manacles and whippings - improve, as far as possible, the medical attention, the food allowance, and the conditions of labor. That is a duty of honor.”

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

Against Capital Punishment (1918), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks

Life , Food

“[I]t's not by chance that Russia and the U. S. forge alliances in the most critical moments of modern history. That was the case in WWI and WWII. Even if there was fierce confrontation, our countries united against a common threat, which means there's something that unites us. There must be some fundamental interest which brings us together. That's something we need to focus on first. We need to be aware of our differences but focus on a positive agenda that can improve our cooperation.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33oIF-ggK5U
2011 - 2015

History , Chance , Country

“After four centuries, Montaigne's curious genius still has that effect on his readers and, time and again, one finds in his self-portrait one's own most brilliant aperçus (the ones that somehow we forgot to write down and so forgot) restored to us in his essays—attempts—to assay—value—himself in his own time as well as, if he was on the subject, all time, if there is such a thing.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Montaigne"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Time

“I am happy and humbled by the continued confidence by the people, but what is important is that public servants seeking the people’s vote like me continue to work to prove that we are worthy of the positions entrusted to us.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Philippine Star http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/02/08/906431/loren-chiz-tied-top-spot-latest-pulse-asia-survey
2013, Mid-Term Campaign Trail

People , Confidence , Happiness

“In order to confine and kill animals for food, we must repress our natural compassion, warping us away from intuition and toward materialism, violence, and disconnectedness.”

Will Tuttle book The World Peace Diet

Preface
The World Peace Diet (2005)

Food , Nature , Animals

“I also believe that US backing for Israeli policies of expansion of the Israeli state and oppression of the Palestinian people is the major cause of bitter division and violence in the world.”

Clare Short (1946) British politician

Quoted in Weeping Skies http://weepingskies.blogspot.com/ and The Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article643725.ece.

People , World

“It is the threat of the use of force [against Iraq] and our line-up there that is going to put force behind the diplomacy. But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Stated http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/19/98021907_tpo.html on NBC's Today Show (February 19, 1998)
1990s

Future , Country

“The centrally planned economies, dissatisfied with the outcome of their own efforts to achieve good economic growth performance, have changed strategy and decided to import high technology from the West. as well as necessary grains to supplement their domestic agicultural supplies. This new approach has opened their economies to Western inflation because imports have been reflecting rising world price. Gold and oil sales at correspondingly rising prices have been used by the Soviet Union to finance part of their import needs. but they are fully enmeshed in world inflation accounting in balancing rising export prices.”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

"Some Economic Scenarios for the 1980's," 1980

World , Effort , Change , Parting

“It is not a matter of who can give the most but rather the spirit in which one participates in nation- building. And I apply that term to whatever useful exercise one is doing at any given time.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Opening address to the Leadership Fiji 2006 program, 9 March 2006.

Exercises , Time

“In the early days of our Federal Government, skeptics concerning its usefulness were found in high places.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

An American Peace Policy (1925)

“Divinity is not proved by having one parent instead of two. It could be argued that such a person is removed from us and could not have been truly man. As to sinlessness, we men are a wicked lot, but all the evil in our children does not come from us. Mothers can pass on evil as well as fathers, and sinlessness cannot be physically determined.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.99

Men , Children , Parent , Evil

“I breathe in the full scent of her. If it ends tomorrow or in eighty years, I could breathe her for the rest of my life. But I want more. I need more. I tilt her slender jaw up with my hand so that she's looking at me. I was going to say something important. Something memorable. But I've forgotten it in her eyes. That gulf that divided us is still there, filled with questions and recrimination and guilt, but that's only part of love, part of being human. Everything is cracked, everything is stained except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 56: In Time

Love , Life , Question , Time

“Extravagant in movie terms but stingy in emotional ones, it embodies all of [director Steven] Spielberg's bad impulses and almost none of his good ones: It's a grand display of how well he knows how to work us over, and yet the desperation with which he tries to get to us is repulsive.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/review/2005/06/29/war/index.html of War of the Worlds (2005)

“When I heard the news that Osama bin Laden was killed by U. S. forces in Pakistan, I had a lot of questions. And one of the people I wanted to talk to was Lawrence Wright. He's joined us several times on the show. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaida and the Road to 9/11, which is based in part on more than 500 interviews, including interviews with friends and relatives of bin Laden.”

Lawrence Wright (1947) American writer

[Terry Gross, Lawrence Wright : Bin Laden's Death 'Long In Coming', Fresh Air, National Public Radio, May 2, 2011]
About

People , Books , Question , Time

“How is it, Chloe, that your pretty skirt
Is torn so badly by the winds that hurt
Real people, you who, in eternity, sing
The hours, sun in your hair appearing
And disappearing? How is that your breasts
Are pierced by shrapnel, and the oak groves burn,
While you, charmed, caring not at all, turn
To run through forests of machinery and concrete
And haunt us with the echoes of your feet?”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"A Book in the Ruins" (1941)
Rescue (1945)

People , Appearance , Singing , Sun

“I taught at a school in Cincinnati with a 0% graduation rate and that was also interesting so I updated from thinking school was beneficial for other people but not beneficial to me, to thinking school was beneficial for maybe some people around the middle – at least some of the better schools – but not beneficial for the vast majority of people, to then actually reading the literature on education and on intelligence and academic accomplishment and symbolic manipulation and concluding "no, school isn't good for anyone". There might be a few schools that are good for people, like there's Blair and there's Stuyvesant and these schools may actually teach people, but school can better be seen as a vaccination program against knowledge than a process for instilling knowledge in people, and of course when a vaccination program messes up, occasionally people get sick and die of the mumps or smallpox or whatever. And when school messes up occasionally people get sick and educated and they lose biological fitness. And in either case the people in charge revise the program and try to make sure that doesn't happen again, but in the case of school they also use that as part of their positive branding and you know maintain a not-very-plausible story about it being intended to cause that effect while also working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.”

Michael Vassar (1979) President of the Singularity Institute

In an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cSG0p-uflA with Adam Ford, December 2012

People , Education , School , Intelligence

“Animals are no one’s property, and they have the right not be ‘taken,’ ‘harvested,’ or ‘culled’ or any other euphemism for murder that wildlife managers use. They are no one’s property, just as you and I are no one’s property other than our own.”

Wayne Pacelle (1965) American activist

"Sabotaging Animal Rights for Deer Hunt," 1986

Animals

“After describing the destruction of temples in Benares and Gujarat, this author stated that “The materials of some of the Hindu temples were used for building mosques.””

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

Muntikhabu’l-Lubab by Khafi Khan, cited in Sharma, Sri Ram, Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Bombay, 1962. quoted from S.R. Goel, Hindu Temples What Happened to them

“Today every child knows what Merz is. But what is 'i'? I is the middle vowel of the alphabet and the designation for the consequence of Merz in relation to an intensive apprehension of the art form. For the shaping of the work of art Merz uses large ready-made complexes that count as material, to shorten as much as possible the path leading from the intuition to the actualization (Sichtbarmachung) of the artistic idea, so as to avoid heat loss through friction. i defines this path as o (i setzt diesen Weg = null). Idea, material, and work of art are the same. i apprehends the work of art in nature. Here the artistic shaping is the recognition of rhythm and expression in a part of nature. Thus, no loss through friction i. e., no disturbing distraction during creation occurs here.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s
Source: the article 'i ein Manifest' (or 'i-manifest'), Kurt Schwitters, in Merz 2. 1923; as quoted in Kurt Schwitters Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery, by Elizabeth Burns Gamard, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2000, p. 116

Art , Idea , Nature , Loss

“The protracted struggle which dragged on in Egypt was not a conflict of visions, but the conflict between a vision of freedom, the "eternal" Platonic Idea of Freedom, and a blind clinging to power ready to use all means possible- terror, food deprivation, exhaustion, bribery- to crush the will to freedom.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Source: Less Than Nothing (2012), Chapter One (The Drink Before), Vacillating The Semblances

Food , Idea , Freedom

“Come," he said, taking her by the hand and leading her to a distant sopha, "come and sit by me, and let us talk of bats.”

Patrick O'Brian book The Unknown Shore

The Unknown Shore (1959).

Distant

“It goes without saying that we have no affinities with the Japanese. They're too foreign to us, by their way of living, by their culture. But my feelings against Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance. I feel myself more akin to any European country, no matter which. Everything about the behaviour of American society reveals that it's half Judaised, and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State like that to hold together—a State where 80 per cent of the revenue is drained away for the public purse—a country where everything is built on the dollar? From this point of view, I consider the British State very much superiour.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

7 January 1942.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

Way , Feeling , Country

“We found that technological optimism is the common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings… Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem— the problem of growth in a finite system- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it… We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefits of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club; not blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress.
Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse.
The way to proceed is clear… [we posses] all that is necessary to create a totally new form of human society… the two missing ingredients are the realistic long-term goal… and the human will to achieve that goal.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. 88, quoted in: Martin Bridgstock, David Burch, John Forge, John Laurent, Ian Lowe (1998) Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246

World , Faith , Way , Optimism

“Did you know that when God made the universe, he didn't lift one finger? He didn't turn one screw or pound one nail. He just spoke and every molecule lined up. That's incredible to think about. When He speaks, the waves lay down; the wind quits blowing. When He speaks, the dead come to life. When He speaks, the universe is created! Everything obeys the voice of God, except us. He's having some trouble out of us right now. But He's going to fix that one of these days when "every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father," coming to a city near you. But the scoffers are willingly ignorant of how God made the heavens by His Word, and they're ignorant of how the earth was standing out of the water and in the water.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Life , God , Thinking , Universe

“Being shot with volcanic suddenness into the Navy at an hour's notice is a queer experience, but I am beginning to get used to the life and to forget that I ever had a moustache or a tweed suit.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Written aboard HMS Engadine in 1914, cited in " The Riddle Of Erskine Childers " By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 200.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918)

Life , Forgetting

“… yet when the Prime Minister and I knock at the door of these great landlords, and say to them: "Here, you know these poor fellows who have been digging up royalties at the risk of their lives, some of them are old, they have survived the perils of their trade, they are broken, they can earn no more. Won't you give them something towards keeping them out of the workhouse?" they scowl at us. We say, "Only a ha'penny, just a copper". They retort, "You thieves!" And they turn their dogs on to us, and you can hear their bark every morning. If this is an indication of the view taken by these great landlords of their responsibility to the people who, at the risk of life, create their wealth, then I say their day of reckoning is at hand.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 154-155.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life , People , Dogs , Wealth

“What happens when our eye sees a rose? What do we do when that happens? Our mind does something, to be sure, in the mere fact of taking in the object, grasping its color, its shape, and so on. We have to be awake and active. But all the same, it is a "relaxed" looking, so long as we are merely looking at it and not observing or studying it, counting or measuring its various features. Such observation would not be a "relaxed" action; it would be what Ernst Jünger termed an "act of aggression." But simply looking at something, gazing at it, "taking it in," is merely to open our eyes to receive the things that present themselves to us, that come to us without any need for "effort" on our part to "possess" them.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 9
The Ernst Jünger quote is from Blätter und Steine (Hamburg, 1934), p. 202.

Color , Effort , Study , Parting

“Frances Egan, the school nurse, left her nutrition charts long enough to tell me there was nothing that could have been done. "Evelyn had a rough time with her father," she said. "Once she came in beaten black and blue."
"What did you do for her?"
"I gave her a cup of tea."
"Tea? Why tea, for heaven's sake?"
"Why? Because I know all about it," she said, shaking with anger. "I know more than anyone here what goes on outside — poverty, disease, dope, degeneracy — yet I'm not supposed to give them even a band-aid. I used to plead, bang on my desk, talk myself hoarse arguing with kids, parents, welfare, administration, social agencies. Nobody really heard me. Now I give them tea. At least, that's something."
"But you're a nurse," I said helplessly.
She showed me the Directive from the Board posted on her wall: THE SCHOOL NURSE MAY NOT TOUCH WOUNDS, GIVE MEDICATION, REMOVE FOREIGN PARTICLES FROM THE EYE…
Are we, none of us, then, allowed to touch wounds? What is the teacher's responsibility? And if it begins at all, where does it end?”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part V, ch. 26 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Disease , School , Parent , Teachers

“For decades the basic message has been, "Dump the leadership, because it lives high on the hog while you toil and starve." That’s the sort of sloganeering that might help undermine a communist state. It won’t work in a far-right, ultra-nationalist state. The pomp that surrounds Kim Jong Un is the whole nation’s pomp, as it were. I have urged American officials who ask me about propaganda to encourage a nationalist approach to it, stressing the North’s disgraceful dependence on China, contrasting the North with an internationally respected South that has really put Korea on the map.I’m not sure this will be enough though. The crucial issue, from a nationalist North Korean’s perspective, is likely to be: Which of the two states is more intent on righting the wrongs foreigners have done to us? Which state wants to unify the peninsula, the nation? And the South all too obviously allows the North to play the heroic role of the sole unifying force. Park Geun-hye made efforts to rectify that neglect but it was too little, too late. And now a very different president is in power.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Effort , Help , Dependency

“Who had used the mysterious September 11 incident as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, killing, injuring and displacing millions of people. Whose military spending exceeded $1,000 billion dollars annually — more than the military budgets of all countries in the world combined? Who dominated the policy-making establishments of the world’s economy, as well as the Security Council, which was ostensibly responsible for safeguarding international security? Do these arrogant Powers really have the competence and ability to run or govern the world? “Can the flower of democracy bloom from [North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s] missiles, bombs and guns?”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2011

People , World , Democracy , Flowers

“The system R forms a well-arranged domain of one dimension extending to infinity on two opposite sides. What is meant by this is sufficiently indicated by my use of expressions borrowed from geometric ideas; but just for this reason it will be necessary to bring out clearly the corresponding purely arithmetic properties in order to avoid even the appearance as if arithmetic were in need of ideas foreign to it.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Idea , Appearance

“The word science of administration has been used. There are many who object to the term. Now if by science is meant a conceptual scheme of things in which every particularity coveted may be assigned a mathematical value, then administration is not a science. In this sense only astro-physics may be called a science and it is well to remember that mechanical laws of the heavens tell us nothing about the color and composition of the stars and as yet cannot account for some of the disturbances and explosions which seem accidental. If, on the other hand, we may rightly use the term science in connection with a body of exact knowledge derived from experience and observation, and a body of rules or axioms which experience has demonstrated to be applicable in concrete practice, and to work out in practice approximately as forecast, then we may, if we please, appropriately and for convenience, speak of a science of administration. Once, when the great French mathematician, Poincaré, was asked whether Euclidean geometry is true, he replied that the question had no sense but that Euclidean geometry is and still remains the most convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that a science is, among other things, a particular branch of knowledge or study; a recognized department of learning.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Source: Philosophy, Science and Art of Public Administration (1939), p. 660-1

Law , Color , Star , Mathematics

“She's telling us how to fight ISIS. Just go to her website. She tells you how to fight ISIS on her website. I don't think General Douglas MacArthur would like that too much. … See, you're telling the enemy everything you want to do. No wonder you've been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.”

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

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Life , Thinking , Fight

“The International War Crimes Tribunal, located at The Hague. When it was established by the United Nations Security Council in 1993, the tribunal was widely viewed as little more that a public relations device. It got off to a slow start (…) During our negotiations, the tribunal emerged as a valuable instrument of policy that allowed us, for example, to bar Karadzic and all other indicted war criminals from public office. Yet no mechanism existed for the arrest of indicted war criminals.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), pp. 189-190

War

“Roger: It does a little bit of both I think it depends on the band. On a band that is enormously huge like Metallica it definitely hurts cause people are just going to download their stuff-period. But a smaller band maybe that hasn’t sold anything but has been able to have some good shows and get some fans out because of their MySpace or whatever you know what I mean. Using the Internet as a tool to promote the band is awesome. My sisters’ band doesn’t have a CD or whatever but they constantly pull 100 kids at their shows because they promote heavily on the internet and they stay in touch with their fans that way so it can be either or. For Less Than Jake we’re right in the middle. We definitely get a lot of paths to talk about the band, and interviews, and stuff for sale, and you know what I mean MySpace’s and Facebook’s all that kind of stuff there’s a presence there that definitely helps the band. But at the same time I know we’re one of the bands that is a victim of a lot of downloading so there you go.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

People , Way , Thinking , Sister

“Our talks were very pleasant, as usual. Remember I used to vote Labour when I was here.”

Hastings Banda (1898–1997) First president of Malawi

"Dr. Banda Denies Civil War", The Times, 12 December 1964, p. 6.
Remarks to the press after talks with Harold Wilson, 11 December 1964.

“In the natural sciences, language (mathematics) is a useful tool: like the microscope or telescope, it enables us to see what is otherwise invisible. In the social sciences, language (literalized metaphor) is an impediment: like a distorting mirror, it prevents us from seeing the obvious.
That is why in the natural sciences, knowledge can be gained only with the mastery of their special languages; whereas in human affairs, knowledge can be gained only by rejecting the pretentious jargons of the social sciences.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary (1990)

Mathematics , Nature , Knowledge , Science

“Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (2) "Editorial Slot"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“He had a sense of irony that ruled his life, made it impossible for him to use his considerable brains in any kind of serious job. Kind of like me.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 22

Life , Sense

“Mister Speaker, let us learn a lesson from the dealing of God with the Jewish nation. When his chosen people, led by the pillar of cloud and fire, had crossed the Red Sea and traversed the gloomy wilderness with its thundering Sinai, its bloody battles, disastrous defeats, and glorious victories; when near the end of their perilous pilgrimage they listened to the last words of blessing and warning from their great leader before he was buried with immortal honors by the angel of the Lord; when at last the victorious host, sadly joyful, stood on the banks of the Jordan, their enemies drowned in the sea or slain in the wilderness, they paused and made solemn preparation to pass over and possess the land of promise. By the command of God, given through Moses and enforced by his great successor, the ark of the covenant, containing the tables of the law and the sacred memorials of their pilgrimage, was borne by chosen men two thousand cubits in advance of the people. On the further shore stood Ebal and Gerizim, the mounts of cursing and blessing, from which, in the hearing of all the people, were pronounced the curses of God against injustice and disobedience, and his blessing upon justice and obedience. On the shore, between the mountains and in the midst of the people, a monument was erected, and on it were written the words of the law, 'to be a memorial unto the children of Israel forever and ever.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Men , God , Children , People

“Much of present science rests on engineering tools, and as time goes on, engineering seems to involve more and more of the science part. …the two fields are growing together! …and now there is not enough time to allow us the leisure which comes from separating the two fields.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Science , Time , Parting

“Progress in these policies can only be brought about if a considerable degree of consensus exists within our country. I have heard some doubt expressed as to what consensus means…Consensus means deliberately setting out to achieve the widest possible measure of agreement about our national policies, in this particular case about our economic activities, in the pursuit of a better standard of living for our people and a happier and more prosperous country. If there be any doubt about the desirability of working towards such a consensus let us recognize that every successful industrialized country in the modern world has been working on such a basis.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech to the Federation of Conservative Students in Manchester (6 October 1981), quoted in The Times (7 October 1981), p. 6. Margaret Thatcher had read Heath's advance text and responded http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104712 by saying that "To me consensus seems to be—the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects".
Post-Prime Ministerial

People , World , Success , Country

“Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, they injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay II: page 280.
Unto This Last (1860)

Wealth

“Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Wars I Have Seen (1945)

Dreams

“We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isn't something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by. And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, you'll find they're one and all tyrants or would-be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.”

Steven Erikson book The Bonehunters

The Bonehunters (2006)

People , Fear , Heart

“(…) Is not meanness also a form of madness? And is not madness the misuse of the mind? Humanity’s problem lies in this misuse of the mind only. All the treasures of nature and spirit are open to man who will use his mind rightly. (…) Fear and greed cause the misuse of the mind. The right use of mind is in the service of love, of life, of truth, of beauty.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Mind
Source: I am That, P.128.

Love , Life , Truth , Fear

“Both views have had their glory moments, and both have had their moments of shame. Whether we’re conservatives or whether we’re liberals, it should remind us that we are human beings who are fallible.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

As quoted in "Liberals Hold the Moral High Ground" https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/liberals-hold-moral-high-ground, Intelligence Squared Debates
2017

“I dream of a time when the people will retake their airways and use them to achieve a voice to rediscover democracy, and to see the divine potential of man.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 20 : The Media : The Perpetual Voice of the Master, the Abiding Ear of the Slave, p. 243. Dream 7 : A Propaganda for People, Not Things

People , Dreams , Democracy , Time

“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically -- to those who hardly think about us in return.”

T. H. White book The Queen of Air and Darkness

The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939)

Thinking , Heart

“No one can buy his share of "clean air" in the market; one has to use communal mechanisms in order to deal with pollution.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 5, Unstable America, p. 196

Communication

“An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

As quoted in Telephony, Vol. 150 (1956), p. 23 http://books.google.com/books?id=Wm0jAQAAMAAJ&q=%22being+able+to+differentiate+between+what+you+do+know%22&dq=%22being+able+to+differentiate+between+what+you+do+know%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qYJOU9dAzoXRAYumgcAP&ved=0CMsCEOgBMDQ; the first two sentences of this statement began to be attributed to Anatole France in the 1990s, but without any citations of sources.

Education , Memory

“We’re very lucky. You know, we have lots of things that we are very fortunate to have. You know, we have a house, you know? We have, you know, all these sort of nice things around us. And so, you know, we’re grateful for that because so many people don’t have that. We have, you know, relative stability and stuff like that. And, you know, lots of things that, you know, everyone would, you know, love to have.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

Response to the question "What’s the coolest thing about being a prince?" in an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC News, as quoted in FishbowlNY (15 June 2007) http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/whats-the-coolest-thing-about-being-a-prince_b5228

Love , People , Housing