Quotes about venture (311 quotes, page 2)

“I venture to predict that, when we get around to reviewing their records, we will find that the rebels were almost all—all, perhaps—men who had never been outstandingly successful at anything. Their only prominence was among themselves.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 10, “—the only game in town”, p. 104

Men , Success

“When I ventured to criticise, the other day, this system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.

I know now, I have learnt now from the letters that I have received, that I am quite out of date. Modern economists have decided there is no difference between capital and income. I am not so sure. In my younger days, I and perhaps others of your Lordships had friends, good friends, very good fellows indeed too, who failed to make this distinction. For a few years everything went on very well, and then at last the crash came, and they were forced to retire out to some dingy lodging-house in Boulogne, or if the estate were larger and the trustees more generous, to a decent accommodation at Baden-Baden.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Hansard, House of Lords, 5th series, vol. 468, cols. 390-1.
Speech in the House of Lords, 14 November 1985.
1980s

Question , Nature , Housing

“Promoters do not have a divine right to stay in charge regardless of how badly they mismanage an enterprise, nor do they have the right to use the banking system to recapitalize their failed ventures.”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

As quoted in " Raghuram Rajan's first speech as RBI governor http://www.firstpost.com/business/read-full-text-raghuram-rajans-first-speech-as-rbi-governor-1084971.html", Firstpost (5 September 2013)

“…it is a revolution without any mandate from the people. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, it is in the first place a revolution in fiscal methods…this Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is that it is a new Liberalism and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these. (Cheers.) Who was the greatest, not merely the greatest Liberal, but the greatest financier that this country has ever known? (A voice, "Gladstone.") I mean Mr. Gladstone. (Cheers.) With Sir Robert Peel—he, I think, occupied a position even higher than Sir Robert Peel—for boldness of imagination and scope of financing Mr. Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our time. (Cheers.) Now, we have in the Cabinet at this moment several colleagues, several ex-colleagues of mine, who served in the Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone…and I ask them, without a moment's fear or hesitation as to the answer that would follow if they gave it from their conscience, with what feelings would they approach Mr. Gladstone, were he Prime Minister and still living, with such a Budget as this? Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive; but, centenarian as he would be, I venture to say that he would make short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with the measure, and they would soon find themselves on the stairs and not in the room. (Laughter and cheers.) In his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as a humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms. They were twin-sisters. How does the Budget stand the test of Liberalism so understood and of Liberty as we have always comprehended it? This Budget seems to establish an inquisition, unknown previously in Great Britain, and a tyranny, I venture to say, unknown to mankind…I think my friends are moving on the path that leads to Socialism. How far they are advanced on that path I will not say, but on that path I, at any rate, cannot follow them an inch. (Loud cheers.) Any form of protection is an evil, but Socialism is the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of prosperity, of the monarchy, of Empire.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Loud cheers.
Speech in Glasgow attacking the "People's Budget" (10 September 1909), reported in The Times (11 September 1909), pp. 7-8.

People , Fear , Family , Faith

“[But ultimately the brunt of all such riots was borne by the Hindus. For instance, this is how Pelsaert describes the situation prevalent in the time of Jahangir (1605-27) during Muharram. ] “The outcry (of mourning) lasts till the first quarter of the day; the coffins (Tazias) are brought to the river, and if the two parties meet carrying their biers (it is worse on that day), and one will not give place to the other, then if they are evenly matched, they may kill each other as if they were enemies at open war, for they run with naked swords like madmen. No Hindu can venture into the streets before midday, for even if they should escape with their life, at the least their arms and legs would be broken to pieces…””

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Pelsaert, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Jahangir’s India

Life , War , Time

“Crystals! Harmony of matter
Born without any clatter
but with Holy's mighty venture
as the sparkling kids of Nature
Crystals! Time past memorizing,
Nature's story vitalizing,
witnessing the world's creation
warning its obliteration…”

Ivan Kostov Nikolov (1913–2004) Bulgarian mineralogist

Ode on Crystals, st. 2 & 3 (24 January 2001).

World , Nature , Time , Past

“Stop any person on the street and they will tell you their own version of what it means to be an American, perhaps accurately, but mostly not. Some might say that being an American means wearing the US flag as a lapel pin. Others might say that in order to be defined as an American, one must attend the right church and be the right type of Christian. Still others will tell you that supporting the troops and, above that even, supporting the President is what makes one American.

Some might even venture that being born in this country or of parents who are citizens of this country is surely enough. On this last point there is some truth, but only in terms of rights, not responsibilities. As such, it presents only half of the equation.”

Larisa Alexandrovna (1971) Ukrainian-American journalist, essayist, poet

What is an American? in You Are An American http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/you-are-an-american_b_5928.html.

Truth , Support , Parent , Personality

“This was the beginning of something, yet I had ventured back into a world from which I had come and found it an alien world of which I was no longer a part. In a sense I had always been alien. My Druidic training had taken me deep into a past that held more than the present, and along with it had been my father’s accounts, returning home after voyages, of a world beyond our shores. I had mingled with the men of his crews, almost half of which had come from other lands, other cultures, until I had become a stranger in my own land.”

Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 31

Men , World , Home , Sense

“I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Preface.

Sense , Time

“There no longer seems to be the fear of retribution, we are empowering each other. We are encouraging each other to change business models, to try new ventures. We are banding together to support each other, to give each other advice, to change our existing culture. I believe that we are on the verge of creating a new antitype.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

Fear , Business , Support , Change

“When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Washington Post interview (1994)

Kiss , Thinking

“At the center of market fundamentalism lies the general acceptance of the Walrasian general equilibrium model, or the neo-classical paradigm. Although many economists came to doubt the universal validity of such models in view of economies of scope, bounded rationality, asymmetric information, and other types of market imperfections and ventured into institutional analysis, the orthodoxy still remains the one which postulate some type of rationality of atomized individuals and the market which mediate among these atomized individuals and firms to reach some stable equilibrium.”

Eisuke Sakakibara (1941) Japanese economist and critic

The End of Market Fundamentalism (1999)

Universe

“In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter II, Section 14, pg. 84

Justice

“The casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known, Gaussian (i. e., bell-curve), and almost computable.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 127

“Two important features in the modern development of economics are the application of mathematics to abstract economic reasoning… and the attempt at placing economics on a numerical and experimental basis by an intensive study of economic statistics.
Both these developments have a common characteristic: they emphasize the quantitative character of economics. This quantitative movement in our estimation is one of the most promising developments in modern economics. We also consider it important that the two aspects of the quantitative method referred to should be furthered, developed, and studied jointly as two integrating parts of economics.
We therefore venture to propose the establishment of an international periodical devoted to the advancement of the quantitative study of economic phenomena, and especially to the development of a closer relation between pure economics and economic statistics.
We believe that the scope of the new journal would be happily suggested if it is called "Oekonometrika."”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Accordingly, the quantitative study of economic phenomena here considered may be termed econometrics.
Frisch (1927) as quoted in Divisia 1953, pp.24-25; Cited in: Bjerkholt, Olav. " Ragnar Frisch and the foundation of the Econometric Society and Econometrica http://www.ssb.no/a/histstat/doc/doc_199509.pdf." ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY MONOGRAPHS 31 (1998): 26-57.
Lead paragraph of a memorandum on the importance of establishing the journal "Oekonometrika"
1920

Mathematics , Study , Parting

“At this time I was hesitant to venture into the greenery, because I wasn't keen on the possibility of having spiders the size of basketballs drop onto my face from overhead branches and refuse to let go. (…) Hunger pains were moving to the 'excruciating' stage by mid-morning. After a last-ditch attempt to extract nutrients from filling my mouth with sand, I decided that, if a big spider the size of a basketball dropped onto my face and tried to eat it, I would eat it back and we could turn the whole thing into an exciting competition.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Source: Fullyramblomatic Novels, Fog Juice, Chapter Two

Hunger , Pain , Time

“It must be very painful to a man of Lord Hugh Cecil's natural benevolence and human charity to find so many of God's children wandering simultaneously so far astray … In these circumstances I would venture to suggest to my noble friend, whose gifts and virtues I have all my life admired, that some further refinement is needed in the catholicity of his condemnations.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to The Times on 12 May 1936, responding to Lord Cecil equally denouncing Italy, France, Japan, the USSR, and Germany; Churchill said that the French did not deserve as much criticism as the others. Quoted by John Gunther in Inside Europe (1940), p. 329.
The 1930s

Life , God , Pain , Children

“It has been said that to appreciate what virtue and morals mean, men must live virtuous and moral lives. It is equally true, that a knowledge of the objects of science is not to be attained by any scheme of definitions, however carefully contrived. He who would know what geometry is, must venture boldly into its depths and learn to think and feel as a geometer.”

James Joseph Sylvester (1814–1897) English mathematician

J. J. Sylvester. "A Probationary Lecture on Geometry", Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 2 (1908), p. 9 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.aas8085.0002.001;view=1up;seq=25

Men , Feeling , Knowledge , Thinking

“Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.”

Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) British writer

Source: The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius (1795–1822), Ch. IV.

Age , Imagination , Time

“There is one way, and only one, of correctly reading a Latin hexameter. There may be three or four ways of reading an English blank verse line. I venture to say that no two mortals ever read aloud any given long passage of verse with precisely the same rhythms.”

John Livingston Lowes (1867–1945) American academic

Conventions and Revolt in Poetry (1919)

Way , Reading

“Our reason for withdrawal is simple. We are party to too many regional trading organisations. The sum effect of this means that our membership is extremely costly to sustain and we must rationalise our participation in such ventures.”

Benjamin Mkapa (1938) Tanzanian politician and former president

Reason for withdrawal from COMESA, September 1999 http://ospiti.peacelink.it/npeople/sep99/Pag1sept.html
1999

“The prophet is always at the mercy of events; nevertheless, I venture to conclude this book with the forecast that at least half the illnesses of mankind will disappear once our food supplies are raised from fertile soil and consumed in a fresh condition.”

Albert Howard

An Agricultural Testament, Oxford University Press, 1943, Part V, Chapter 15. Full text online http://ps-survival.com/PS/Agriculture/An_Agricultural_Testament_1943.pdf.

Books , Food

“There is, I venture to think, no ground for the ordinarily accepted statement of the relation of philosophy to theology and religion. It is usually said that while^hilosophy is the creation of an individual mind, theology or religion is, like folk-lore and language, the product of the collective mind of a people or a race. This is to confuse philosophy with philosophies, a conmion and, it must be admitted, a not unnatural confusion. But while a philosophy is the creation of a Plato, an Aristotle, a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel, ^hilosophy itself is, like religion, folk-lore and language, a product of the collective mind of humanity. It is advanced, as these are, by individual additions, interpretations and syntheses, but it is none the less quite istinct from such individual contributions. philosophy is humanity's hold on Totality, and it becomes richer and more helpful as man's intellectual horizon widens, as his intellectual vision grows clearer, and as his insights become more numerous and more sure. Theology is philosophy of a particular type. It is an interpretation of Totality in terms of God and His activities. In the impressive words of Principal Caird, that philosophy which is theology seeks "to bind together objects and events in the links of necessary thought, and to find their last ground and reason in that which comprehends and transcends all— the nature of God Himself." Religion is the apprehension and the adoration of the Grod Whom theology postulates.
If the whole history of philosophy be searched for material with which to instruct the beginner in what philosophy really is and in its relation to theology and religion, the two periods or epochs that stand out above all others as useful for this purpose are Greek thought from Thales to Socrates, and that interpretation of the teachings of Christ by philosophy which gave rise, at the hands of the Church Fathers, to Christian theology. In the first period we see the simple, clear-cut steps by which the mind of Europe was led from explanations that were fairy-tales to a natural, well-analyzed, and increasingly profound interpretation of the observed phenomena of Nature. The process is so orderly and so easily grasped that it is an invaluable introduction to the study of philosophic thinking. In the second period we see philosophy, now enriched by the literally huge contributions of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, intertwining itself about the simple Christian tenets and building the great system of creeds and thought which has immortalized the names of Athanasius and Hilary, Basil and Gregory, Jerome and Augustine, and which has given color and form to the intellectual life of Europe for nearly two thousand years. For the student of today both these developments have great practical value, and the astonishing neglect and ignorance of them both are most discreditable.”

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

" Philosophy" (a lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on science, philosophy and art, March 4, 1908) https://archive.org/details/philosophyalect00butlgoog"

Life , God , People , Religion

“Our constitution is comparatively a new constitution. It is based largely on the model of the British Constitution. As such it has history if not ancestry, which may well go back to centuries. It is being worked I venture to presume, successfully and to the satisfaction of all concerned although within the short period of 10 years, it has had to undergo not less than 7 amendments…The constitution is largely founded on the British Constitution. There are certain differences which are obvious. The British Constitution is a unitary constitution in which the Parliament is supreme, having no other authority sharing its power of legislation except such as may be delegated. Our constitution is a federal constitution in which the powers and functions of the Union Parliament and the State Legislatures are clearly defined and the one has no power or right to encroach upon the rights and powers reserved to the other.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

From his speech given on 28 November 1960 at laying the foundation-stone of the building of the Law Institute of India, in: p. 14
Presidents of India, 1950-2003

History

“We venture to say a few words in explanation of the plan of this work. Its object is not to force upon the public the personal views or theories of its author; nor has it the pretensions of a scientific work, which aims at creating a revolution in some department of thought. It is rather a brief summary of the religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind, and the exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of which none — thanks to prejudice and bigotry — have reached Christendom in so unmutilated a form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the unlucky mediaeval philosophers, the last to write upon these secret doctrines of which they were the depositories, few men have dared to brave persecution and prejudice by placing their knowledge upon record. And these few have never, as a rule, written for the public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times who possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding them or their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them en masse as either charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of the noblest of sciences — that of the spiritual man — has gradually fallen.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Introduction
Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I

Men , Secret , Religion , Understanding

“The quantum theory, as it is now constituted, presents us with a very great challenge, if we are at all interested in such a venture, for in quantum physics there is no consistent notion at all of what the reality may be that underlies the universal constitution and structure of matter. Thus, if we try to use the prevailing world view based on the notions of particles, we discover that the 'particles' (such as electrons) can also manifest as waves, that they move discontinuously, that there are no laws at all that apply in detail to the actual movements of individual particles and that only statistical predictions can be made about large aggregates of such particles. If on the other hand we apply the world view in which the world is regarded as a continuous field, we find that this field must also be discontinuous, as well as particle-like, and that it is as undermined in its actual behaviour as is required in the particle view of relation as a whole.”

David Bohm book Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)

World , Law , Reality , Universe

“Too many leaders are afraid of letting their minds wander too far; they put fences around their dreams. If you want to accomplish great things, you must dare to venture beyond today’s realities. The thinking behind ‘Imagine the Possible’ was that we needed to push even further, beyond the self-imposed limits of our current thought processes and previous experiences.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 107.
On Leading Well

Dreams , Imagination , Thinking , Reality

“What is the "cost of capital" to a, firm in a world in which funds are used to acquire assets whose yields are uncertain; and in which capital can be obtained by many different media, ranging from pure debt instruments, representing money-fixed claims, to pure equity issues, giving holders only the right to a pro-rata share in the uncertain venture? This question has vexed at least three classes of economists: (1) the corporation finance specialist concerned with the techniques of financing firms so as to ensure their survival and growth; (2) the managerial economist concerned with capital budgeting; and (3) the economic theorist concerned with explaining investment behavior at both the micro and macro levels.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Franco Modigliani and Merton H. Miller. "The cost of capital, corporation finance and the theory of investment." The American economic review (1958): 261-297.

Money , World , Behavior , Question

“If I ventured in the slipstream,
Between the viaducts of your dream,
Where immobile steel rims crack,
And the ditch in the back roads stop,
Could you find me?
Would you kiss my eyes?
To lay me down,
In silence easy,
To be born again.
To be born again.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Astral Weeks
Song lyrics, Astral Weeks (1969)

Dreams , Kiss , Silence

“In this chapter I want to raise the question partly in jest but partly also in seriousness whether the concept of the image cannot become the abstract foundation of a new science, or at least a cross-disciplinary specialization. As I am indulging in the symbolic communication of an image of images I will even venture to give the science a name — Eiconics — hoping thereby to endow it in the minds of my readers with some of the prestige of classical antiquity. I run some risk perhaps of having my new science confused with the study of icons. A little confusion, however, and the subtle overtones of half-remembered associations are all part of the magic of the name.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Robert A. Solo (1994) commented: "Curiously, and quite independently of the publication of the The Image, there did occur in the 1950s and in the decades that followed a revolutionary transformation of the social and behavioral sciences associated with the term structuralism, which hinged on the concept and study of the image (call it cognitive structure, or paradigm, or episteme, or ideology). This was the case in the work of Jean Piaget in psychology, of Thomas Kuhn and Michael Foucault in the history and philosophy of science, of Noam Chomsky in linguistics, of Claude Levi Strauss in anthropology, and others. Though The Image was the first and in my view by far the finest American structuralist essay, it had no visible impact on economics... The economist's image of his world is alas very difficult to penetrate and even more difficult to change."
Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 128

Hope , Communication , Question , Study

“What will we do when they start capturing our people?" Klein asked. "They will, you know, if they haven't by now. Things go wrong." Heydrich's fingers drummed some more. He didn't worry about the laborers who'd expanded this redoubt- they'd all gone straight to the camps after they did their work. But captured fighters were indeed another story. He sighed. "Things go wrong. Ja. If they didn't, Stalin would be lurking somewhere in the Pripet Marshes, trying to keep his partisans fighting against us. We would've worked Churchill to death in a coal mine." He barked laughter. "The British did some of that for us, when they threw the bastard out of office last month. And we'd be getting ready to fight the Amis on their side of the Atlantic. But… things went wrong." "Yes, sir." After a moment, Klein ventured, "Uh, sir- you didn't answer my question." "Oh. Prisoners." Heydrich had to remind himself what his aide was talking about. "I don't know what to do, Klein, except make sure our people all have cyanide pills." "Some won't have the chance to use them. Some won't have the nerve," Klein said. Not many men had the nerve to tell Reinhard Heydrich the unvarnished truth. Heydrich kept Klein around not least because Klein was one of those men. They were useful to have. Hitler would have done better had he seen that. Heydrich recognized the truth when he heard it now; one more thing Hitler'd had trouble with.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 56-57

Death , Men , People , Truth

“I hope and believe cultural history will make progress if it also fixes its attention firmly on the individual human being. Movements, as distinct from periods, are started by people. Some of them are abortive, others catch on. Each movement in its turn has a core of dedicated souls, a crowd of hangers-on, not to forget a lunatic fringe. There is a whole spectrum of attitudes and degrees of conversion. Even within the individual there may be various levels of conviction, various conscious and unconscious fluctuations in loyalty. What seemed acceptable during the mass rally or revivalist meeting may look pretty crazy on the way home. But movements would not be movements if they did not have their badges, their outward signs, their style of behaviour, style of speech and of dress. Who can probe the motives which prompt individuals to adopt some of these, and who would venture in every case to pronounce on the completeness of the conversion this adoption may express? Knowing these limitations, the cultural historian will be a little wary of the claims of cultural psychology.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

People , Hope , Way , Home

“Melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality; we run aground sooner than the flat-bottomed pleasure-lovers but we venture out in weather that would sink them and we choose our direction.”

Cyril Connolly book The Unquiet Grave

Part III: La Clé des Chants (p.115)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Pleasure , Lovers , Reality , Weather

“Now, as an embittered cynic, I should be almost programmed to vomit all over the screen at the mere sight of this, but instead, I find it strangely moving. You see, as I stare into their happy smiling faces filled with naive joie de vivre, I know they're just blissfully unaware of the crushing despair that awaits them as they venture further into adulthood. The myriad disappointments, the yawning chasms of pain, the slow gnawing descent into physical decay, the sheer unrelenting horror of it all.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe S4E4
Discussing the High School Musical series
Screenwipe

Pain , Smile , Disappointment , Adulthood

“Some men speak one moment before they think; others tediously study everything they say, and in conversation bore us as painfully as was the travail of their mind; they are, as it were, made up of phrases and quaint expressions, whilst their gestures are as affected as their behaviour. They call themselves "purists," and do not venture to say the most trifling word not in use, however expressive it may be. Nothing comes from them worth remembering, nothing is spontaneous and unrestrained; they speak correctly, but they are very tiresome.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

15
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

Men , Thinking , Study

“It's that mysterious thing called hype. I've looked under every rock, and I couldn't find out what it means. Certain people hear a certain melody, and they're attracted to it. I'm in love with that feeling. We're looking for fun and adventure and a bit of redemption and somewhere to live. Everything else is a blind venture into the unknown.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Definitions and objects

Love , People , Feeling

“Almost all Muslims, including the most enlightened, feel offended by Rushdie's novel or, rather, by reports they have read or heard about it. Very few people have actually read the dense and tortuous book, but they do not have to. The very idea of using the prophet Muhammad as a character in a novel is painful to many Muslims. The entire Islamic system consists of the so-called Hodud, or limits beyond which one should simply not venture. Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression. Call them taboos, if you like, but Islam considers a wide variety of topics as permanently closed. Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never anything that even remotely touches their faith… To Muslims religion is not just a part of life. It is, in fact, life that is a part of religion. Muslims cannot understand a concept that has no rules, no limits. The Western belief in human rights, which seems to lack limits, is alien to Islamic traditions… The fact that Rushdie propagated his heresy in a book is of especial significance to Muslims. Islam is the religion of the book par excellence.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Few cultures hold the written and printed word in so much awe as Muslims, even though the vast majority are illiterate. When a Muslim wants to clinch an argument he says, 'It is written.'
"Khomeini's Scapegoat", Times, London, (February 13, 1989).

Life , Pain , People , Books

“I believe the promises of God enough to venture an eternity on them.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Source: Attributed from postum publications, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 261.

God

“Except for the subserviency of most of the metropolitan newspapers, the great corporate interests would never have ventured upon the impudent, lawless consolidation of business, for the suppression of competition, the control of production, markets and prices.
Except for this monstrous crime, 65 per cent of all the wealth of this country would not now be centralized in the hands of 2 per cent of the people.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)

People , Business , Country , Wealth

“It is sometimes hard even for biologists to remember that sex is merely a genetic joint venture.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

Sex

“As Ralph Ellison wrote more than 35 years ago, 'Why is it so often true that when critics confront the American as Negro, they suddenly drop their advanced critical armament and revert with an air of confident superiority to quite primitive modes of analysis?' Those matters accomplished by whites are routinely subjected to sophisticated modes of analysis. But the when the selfsame matters are accomplished by blacks, the opaque racial prism of analysis precludes such sophistication, and all is seen in black and white. And some who would not venture onto the more sophisticated analytical turf are quite content to play in the minor leagues of primitive harping. The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Confidence , Change

“My dear Hardman,
It was pleasant… I am sorry that your Oriental venture has not been going as well as you expected. But, then, I think that the days when a man could expect to make his fortune in the East are dead and gone. Indeed, the time seems to have come for the reverse of the old process to apply, and for the East to dominate the West.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

Thinking , Time , Dead

“And lately fashion photographers, bored with Rome or the Acropolis, have ventured farther afield for the frisson of syncretism. Why not Calcutta? Why not the slums of Rio? Cairo? Mexico City? The attempt is for an unearned, casual brush with awe by enlisting untouchable extras. And if the model can be seen to move with idiot stridency through tragedy, then the model is invincible. Luxury is portrayed as protective. Or protected. Austere, somehow—“spiritual.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Irony posing as asceticism or as worldly-wise.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Fashion

“The legislator of the Jews in a bolder spirit went to a further extreme and in the practice of his “naked” philosophy, as they call it, ventured to speak of him who was possessed by love of the divine.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

43.
Every Good Man is Free

Love

“Go tell Mankind, that there are Devils and Witches; and that tho those night-birds least appear where the Day-light of the Gospel comes, yet New-Engl. has had Exemples of their Existence and Operation; and that no only the Wigwams of Indians, where the pagan Powaws often raise their masters, in the shapes of Bears and Snakes and Fires, but the House of Christians, where our God has had his constant Worship, have undergone the Annoyance of Evil spirits. Go tell the world, What Prays can do beyond all Devils and Witches, and What it is that these Monsters love to do; and through the Demons in the Audience of several standers-by threatned much disgrace to thy Author, if he let thee come abroad, yet venture That, and in this way seek a just Revenge on Them for the Disturbance they have given to such as have called on the Name of God.”

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) American religious minister and scientific writer

Memorable providence, relating to witchcraft's and possessions. (1689) http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/ASA_MATH.HTM

Love , God , World , Way

“Considering how readily musicologists criticize one another – witness the merciless footnotes (and reviews) of so many books and articles – the innocent bystander must find it strange that they remain unwilling to venture judgments about the quality of the music around which they work…But it is hard to see what can be the purpose of musicology if not to advise people on what to hear and how to hear it. Separating out the good, the bad and the indifferent, and helping listeners enjoy the best, is surely the least we can offer society in return for our keep.”

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson British musicoloigst

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (1997), "The good, the bad and the boring", Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165404.

People , Books , Music , Help

“You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's — not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you — not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity — not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul — a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

as reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 29.

God , Books , Soul

“As it is generally seen, blank verse seems to be only a laborious and doubtful struggle to escape from the fangs of prose… if it ever ventures to relax into simple and natural phraseology, it instantly becomes tame and the prey of its pursuer.”

Charles Symmons (1749–1826) Welsh poet

Preface to the First Edition
The Æneis (1817)

Nature

“The second part of the book… contains an exposition of the first principles of the theory of complex quantities; hitherto, the very elements of this theory have not been easily accessible to the English student, except recently in Prof. Chrystal's excellent treatise on Algebra. The subject of Analytical Trigonometry has been too frequently presented to the student in the state in which it was left by Euler, before the researches of Cauchy, Abel, Gauss, and others, had placed the use of imaginary quantities, and especially the theory of infinite series and products, where real or complex quantities are involved, on a firm scientific basis. In the Chapter on the exponential theorem and logarithms, I have ventured to introduce the term "generalized logarithm" for the doubly infinite series of values of the logarithm of a quantity.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

A Treatise on Plane Trigonometry https://books.google.com/books?id=_ktLAAAAMAAJ (1891) Preface

Books , Parting

“Is learning a venture in spiritual freedom that is humanism, or is it a routine process of animal training?”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 27

Freedom , Learning , Animals , Training

“But on the other hand, the understanding, reflection, is also a gift of God. What shall one do with it, how dispose of it if one is not to use it? And if one then uses it in fear and trembling not for one’s own advantage but to serve the truth, if one uses it that way in fear and trembling and furthermore believing that it still is God who determines the issue in its eternal significance, venturing to trust in him, and with unconditional obedience yielding to what he makes use of it: is this not fear of God and serving God the way a person of reflection can, in the somewhat different way than the spontaneously immediate person, but perhaps more ardently. But if this is the case, does not a maieutic element enter into the relation to other man or to various other men. The maieutic is really only the expression for a superiority between man and man. That is exists cannot be denied-but existence presses far more powerfully upon the superior one precisely because he is a maieutic (because he has the responsibility) than upon the other. As far as I am concerned, there has been no lack of witnesses. All my upbuilding discourses are in fact in the form of direct communication. Consequently there can be a question only about this, something that has occupied me for a long time (already back in earlier journals): should I for one definitely explain myself as author, what I declare myself to be, how I from the beginning understood myself to be a religious author. But now is not the time to do it; I am also somewhat strained at the moment, I need more physical recreation.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

JP VI 6234 (Pap. IX A 222 1848)
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Men , God , Truth , Fear

“I will venture to say that upon the one great class of subjects, the largest and the most weighty of them all, where the leading and determining considerations that ought to lead to a conclusion are truth, justice and humanity—upon these, gentlemen, all the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.”

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

Speech in Liverpool (28 June 1886), quoted in The Times (29 June 1886), p. 11.
1880s

Truth , World , Justice

“You are not to disbelieve human science or think human reason invalid except when they venture outside their province.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: What we live by (1932), p. 31

Thinking , Science

“Saramago is … interesting, but I don't think I would put it higher than that … [he] ventures too far into the realm of 'magic realism' for my taste. Reality itself is magical enough without inventing whimsicalities.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Quote from The militant magician http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/dec/28/featuresreviews.guardianreview11?INTCMP=SRCH, The Guardian (28 December 2002).

Thinking , Reality

“We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: IGNORANCE, and but one salvation: APPLIED KNOWLEDGE.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

The Rosicrucian Mysteries (1911)

Knowledge

“I venture out to the great 'sujet'; but, I repeat, my painting always remains object painting; it starts around 1936 with 'Adam et Eve'. My figures humanise themselves further, but I always stick to the pictorial circumstance – no eloquence, no romanticism”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Bekentnisse und Gespräche, Fernand Léger, André Verdet, Zürich 1957, pp. 32-33
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's

Painting

“More broadly, strategic alliances are more difficult to manage and coordinate than single ventures; the potential for misunderstanding and disagreement, particularly between partners from different cultures, is great. Certainly many such alliances are short lived.”

Peter Dicken (1938) British geographer

Source: Global Shift (2003) (Fourth Edition), Chapter 8, Transnational Production Networks, p. 262

“Zionism as a colonial movement is constituted in ideology and practice by a religio-racial epistemology through which it apprehends itself and the world around it. This religioracial grid informs and is informed by its colonial-settler venture. The colonial model remains the best model through which Zionism should be analyzed, but it is important also to analyze the racial dimension of Zionism in its current manifestation, which is often elided.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, "The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle", Interventions, 2003, based on an earlier and shorter article entitled "On Zionism and Jewish supremacy", New Politics, 2002.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

World

“Being encouraged by… success, beyond expectation; I afterwards ventured on many others and scarce missed of any, that I undertook, for many years, during our civil Wars, and afterwards. But of late years, the French Methods of Cipher are grown so intricate beyond what it was wont to be, that I have failed of many; tho' I have master'd divers of them. Of such deciphered Letters, there be copies of divers remaining in the Archives of the Bodleyan Library in Oxford; and many more in my own Custody, and with the Secretaries of State.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

War , Success

“As to the most prudent logicians might venture to deduce from a skein of wool the probable existence of a sheep; so you, from the raw stuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which transcends the reproductive powers of your loom.”

Evelyn Underhill book Practical Mysticism

Source: Practical Mysticism (1914), Chapter II, The World Of Reality, p. 38

Universe

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

God , Pain , Way , Feeling

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love , Life , Death , God

“Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture.”

Amelia Earhart book Last Flight

Source: Last Flight (1937), p. 51

“We are weary and heavy laden, and our heavenly Father offers to carry us and our affairs in His own everlasting arms. And so far as the weariness is concerned, we consent; we consent to be carried and find rest to our souls. But " heavy laden," — no, we cannot part with the heavy load. This responsibility, this nervousness about the absent, this household worry, this mercantile venture, this literary experiment, this invalid friend, we cannot transfer to Him who says, "Cast thy burden on the Lord," but even our bleared and sleepy eyes we open from time to time to see that it is still there, and ("O fools and slow of heart!") when we can guard it no longer, the relaxing arms are still in attitude as if they enclasped it, all unconscious that it is now better cared for elsewhere.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 99.

Fools , Soul , Time , Heart

“In its new aspect the corporation is a means whereby the wealth of innumerable individuals has been concentrated into huge aggregates and whereby control over this wealth has been surrendered to a unified direction. The power attendant upon such concentration has brought forth princes of industry, whose position in the community is yet to be defined. The surrender of control over their wealth by investors has effectively broken the old property relationships and has raise the problem of defining these relationship anew. The direction of industry by persons other than those who have ventured their wealth has raised the question of the motive force back of such direction and the effective distribution of the returns from business enterprise.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 2 (1967, p. 4)

Communication , Motivation , Question , Business

“Yes, sex may be at least in part inflected by politics, our fantasies may be at least in part a compendium of cultural myths, but the ways in which sex and fantasy ripen within the individual seem to me to vary so greatly that summaries become useless, even dangerous.But if I were to venture my own generalizations, I would say that with the collapse of other social values (those of religion, patriotism, the family and so on), sex has been forced to take up the slack, to become our sole mode of transcendence and our only touchstone of authenticity. The cry for scorching, multiple orgasms, the drive toward impeccable and virtuoso performance, the belief that only in complete sexual compatibility lies true intimacy, the insistence that sex is the only mode for experiencing thrills, for achieving love, for assessing and demonstrating personal worth — all these projects are absurd.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

New York City (p. 282).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Love , Family , Religion , Sex

“Notice that there is no sociology in the book. Scientific communities and their practices are, however, at its core, entering with paradigms, as we saw, at page 10 and continuing to the final page of the book. There had been sociology of scientific knowledge before Kuhn, but after Structure it burgeoned, leading to what is now called science studies. This is a self-generating field (with, of course, its own journals and societies) that includes some work in the history and the philosophy of sciences and technology, but whose emphasis is on sociological approaches of various kinds, some observational, some theoretical. Much, and perhaps most, of the really original thinking about the sciences after Kuhn has had a sociological bent.
Kuhn was hostile to these developments. In the opinion of many younger workers, that is regrettable. Let us put it down to dissatisfaction with growing pains of the field, rather than venturing into tedious metaphors about fathers and sons. One of Kuhn’s marvelous legacies is science studies as we know it today.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (2012), Introductory Essay, in 50th anniversary edition of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution

Pain , Hostility , Books , History

“In a stroke of imaginative genius our understanding of consciousness was radically transformed, but in an entirely unexpected way. Critical clues came from diffuse nerve nets and, even more extraordinarily, plant neurobiology. Banished forever was the idea that the brain alone was the seat of consciousness. Rather, it is an 'antenna' embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix. The depths of reality are only now being uncovered, but now the springs of imagination, intuition, abstraction and even pre-cognition are revealed. What was once called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics was simply a clue to a superbly structured universe where mind is an integral component, instantiated at the big bang or maybe even before? Future exploration offers dizzying prospects, but we are not the first to venture forth. Far in advance of the emergence of human consciousness, innumerable galactic civilisations had slipped into what we now call the Mortimer Manifold.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

"King of Sweden" presenting "Professor Mortimer" with the 2056 Nobel prize, in "Simon Conway Morris forecasts the future" at NewScientist.com (15 November 2006) http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts/dn10477-simon-conway-morris-forecasts-the-future.html.

Way , Imagination , Spring , Mathematics

“When that happens, and the “World’s Sole Remaining Superpower” loses its early-adopter advantage, drone technology will work to the advantage of the side with the most decentralized, distributed organizational infrastructure, and the most widely dispersed and hardened end-points. And it will disproportionately hurt the side with the most centralized, hierarchical form of organization and the most concentrated target profile. Anyone want to venture a guess as to which respective sides fit those descriptions? Imagine, if you will, a world in which drones are cheap and widely available. Then stop and think about the target profile of the Empire and the corporate interests it serves. Imagine how easy it would be to get targeting information on the homes, churches and country clubs of the senior management and directors of the aerospace companies that make American drones. The Boardrooms and C-Suites themselves. The factories. The whole South Asian chain of command, from CINC CENTCOM down to battalion and flight headquarters. The logistical tail of the drones, including the control centers at every airbase from which drones are staged. Begin to get the picture?”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Bring on the Drones! (2013)
Other Writing

World , Home , Imagination , Thinking

“After the first day there [In 1961, at the invitation of Tatyana Grosman, Frankenthaler ventured out to Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), Grosman's Long Island printmaking studio, and began making lithographs for the first time] I felt no hesitation. I was very committed. All I had to do was start work on that print. It was a whole new road - and a very connected road.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote from Artists and Prints: Masterworks from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Deborah Wye; The Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p. 146 http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=69050
1990s - 2000s

Art , Universe , Time

“I venture to hope that…the Government will approach the question with a desire to deal in the most liberal manner they can with Ireland, and to give her, if need be, more than justice requires, in order that we may bring about peace. That would be good policy in the long run.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1921/jun/16/the-government-of-ireland#column_635 in the House of Lords (16 June 1921) during the Irish War of Independence
1920s

Peace , Justice , Hope , Question

“I would tell them of my own intention to keep my counsel…and I will venture to recommend them, as an old Parliamentary hand, to do the same.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jan/21/first-eight in the House of Commons (21 January 1886).
1880s

“I expect this to be my last venture in this field; 'tain't worth the grief”

Robert A. Heinlein book Grumbles from the Grave

Response to efforts to censor his first novel, Red Planet
Grumbles from the Grave (1989)

“Brethren, let me close with a note of buoyant optimism and also a word of caution that masonry is not always on trial, but we, as Masons, are perpetually on trial. Let us remind ourselves that Masonry represents Manhood at its best and let me venture to express the hope that in building the City of Fraternity or what W. M Mallaradya more appropriately calls it, the Ideal Temple of Humanity and in fostering its growth, we shall be able to qualify ourselves to be men of true enlightenment, character, integrity, gentility and sympathetic understanding and Masons with a burning desire to dedicate ourselves to the service of humanity in our own limited sphere of activity.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

In his address to the members of the Masonic Fraternity on the occassion of his joining as member of the Masonic Lodge. quoted in "Article # 14 Initiate responds to his Toast R.W.Bro. Jaya Chamaraja Wadeyar".

Men , Hope , Optimism , Understanding

“Naught venture naught have.”

Thomas Tusser (1524–1580) English poet

"October's Abstract". Compare: "Naught venture naught have", John Heywood, Proverbes, Part I, Chapter XI.
A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557)

“Words were no gift, said Haut. They were tangled nets snaring all who ventured into their midst, until an entire people could hang helpless, choking on their own arguments, even as dissolution closed in on all sides.
The Jaghut had rejected that path. Defying the eternal plea for communication among peoples, in the name of understanding, peace or whatever, they had stopped talking, even with each other. And their city was abandoned, home now to a single soul, the Lord of Hate, the one who had laid bare the brutal truth of the future awaiting them all.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Hate , People , Truth , Peace

“It were to be wished that no youth of genius were suffered ever to look into Statius, Lucan, Claudian, or Seneca the tragedian; authors who, by their forced conceits, by their violent metaphors, by their swelling epithets, by their want of just decorum, have a strong tendency to dazzle and to mislead inexperienced minds, and tastes unformed, from the true relish of possibility, propriety, simplicity, and nature. […] If I might venture to pronounce so rigorous a sentence, I would say, that the Romans can boast of but eight poets who are unexceptionably excellent,—namely, Terence, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Phaedrus. These only can be called legitimate models of just thinking and writing. Succeeding authors, as it happens in all countries, resolving to be original and new, and to avoid the imputation of copying, become distorted and unnatural. By endeavouring to open an unbeaten path, they deserted simplicity and truth; weary of common and obvious beauties, they must needs hunt for remote and artificial decorations…”

Joseph Warton (1722–1800) English literary critic

An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, Vol. II (1782), pp. 21–24

Truth , Youth , Beauty , Nature

“The spread, both in and width and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge by during the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole; but, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it. I can see no other escape from this dilemma (lest our true who aim be lost for ever) than that some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with second-hand and incomplete knowledge of some of them -and at the risk of making fools of ourselves.”

Erwin Schrödinger book What Is Life?

What Is Life? (1944)

Fools , Feeling , Knowledge

“We resolved to end our poison-enquiries by tasting the venomous liquor. According, having diluted a quantity of it, with a very little warm water, several of us ventured to put some of it upon the tip of our tongues. We all agreed, that it tasted very sharp and fiery, as if the tongue had been struck through with something scalding or burning. This sensation went off in two or three hours: and one gentleman, who would not be satisfied without trying a large drop undiluted, found his tongue swelled with a little inflammation and the soreness lasted two days. But neither his nor our boldness was attended with any ill consequence.”

Richard Mead (1673–1754) British physician

Source: A Mechanical Account of Poisons (1702), p. 22

Water

“Since the 1970s, thanks to a North Korean-style cult of personality, the [Syrian] presidency has been a kind of supranational institution, above anything as vulgar as the competition for power. But now it has lost its mystique: The president is a lonely man who dares not venture beyond his palace in the outskirts of a besieged capital. Syria’s history since independence in 1947 shows that whenever a ruler calls in the army to crush the street, he ends up the loser. It happened three times in 1949 alone, when the army staged three coups, each time after being ordered to crush the street.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The loneliest man in Syria" http://nypost.com/2011/05/10/the-loneliest-man-in-syria/, New York Post (May 10, 2011).
New York Post

History , Time , Personality

“Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured.
"Why?”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

"Um..."
The Amulet of Samarkand (2003)

Hate

“Already an old man, he [Samuel Johnson] ventured on his Highland tour; and his heart, bound with triple brass, did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups of tea.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

314.
Aes Triplex (1878)

Heart , Tea

“When I came to Intel, I was scared to death. I left a very secure job where I knew what I was doing and started running R&D for a brand new venture in untried territory. It was terrifying.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

1980s - 1990s
Source: Andrew Grove (1993), cited in: " Andy Grove, Valley Veteran Who Founded Intel, Dies at 79 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-22/andy-grove-taught-silicon-valley-how-to-do-business-dies-at-79," Bloomberg.com, March 21, 2016

Death

“I venture on assuring you that I regard the design formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may make on behalf of individual freedom and independence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism.”

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

Letter to F. W. Hirst on being unable to write a preface to Essays in Liberalism by "Six Oxford Men" (2 January 1897), as quoted In the Golden Days (1947) by F. W. Hirst, p. 158
1890s

Effort , Freedom , Sincerity

“I'm the only guy who actually invented anything of the judges. They got a couple of advertising hacks, and a venture capitalist.”

Doug Hall (1944) American television personality

Denver Post Doug Hall of "Inventor" invents a lot, but not the truth http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_3645379

Guy

“No other man has had the distinction of serving this long in Congress, and I venture to say it will be a long time before another does.”

Carl Hayden (1877–1972) American federal politician

Strom Thurmond
Johnson, James W. (2002). Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious, illustrations by David `Fitz' Fitzsimmons, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. pp 155. ISBN 0-8165-2203-0.
About

Time

“Go, then, young men, where glory waits you. The field is the world. Go where the abjects wander, and gather them into the fold of the sanctuary. Go to the lazarettos where the moral lepers herd, and tell them of the healing balm. Go to the haunts of crime, and float a gospel message upon the feculent air. Go wherever there are ignorant to be instructed, timid to be cheered, and helpless to be succored, and stricken to be blessed, and erring to be reclaimed. Go wherever faith can see, or hope can breathe, or love can work, or courage can venture. Go and win the spurs of your spiritual knighthood there.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 131.

Love , Men , World , Faith

“The amazing number of species; their curious forms, so infinitely varied, and yet so nearly and gradually approximating through an endless series of transitions from one species to another; the diversity of structure observable in those parts which afford generic characters, added to the wonderful changes in form which they undergo, with their surprising economy - are circumstances which contribute to render them objects of most curious speculation to the philosopher. And although the study of every class of animals is most indisputably attended with peculiar advantages, yet we shall venture to affirm, that is from a knowledge of the characters, metamorphoses, and various modes of life, this little animals are destined to pursue, that [the natural philosopher] will obtain a more intimate acquaintance with the great laws of nature, and veneration for the Great Creator of all, that can be derived from the contemplation of any other class in nature.”

William Elford Leach (1790–1836) English zoologist and marine biologist

As quoted in Entomology https://archive.org/stream/CUbiodiversity1121039#page/646/mode/2up/search/creator (1816), Volume 8 of the first American edition of Sir David Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, p. 646.

Life , Law , Nature , Knowledge

“Most men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed off wings where he never ventures.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

Presque tous les hommes ressemblent à ces grands palais déserts dont le propriétaire n'habite que quelques pièces; et il ne pénètre jamais dans les ailes condamnées.
Journal, 1932-1939 (Paris: Table ronde, 1947) p. 6; Adrienne Foulke (trans.) Second Thoughts (Plainview, NY: Books for Libraries Press, [1961] 1973) p. 142.

Men

“It is a fascinating story to those who care for their Bible. It is the life-history of the greatest of books, diversified by interesting episodes which appeal to our human sympathies; and we venture to think that the result is reassuring. It may be disturbing to some to part with the conception of a Bible handed down through the ages without alteration and in unchallenged authority; but it is a higher ideal to face the facts, to apply the best powers with which God has endowed us to the solutions of the problems which they present to us; and it reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scripture, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 144

Life , God , Books , Age

“And yet I will venture to believe that in no time, since the beginnings of Society, was the lot of those same dumb millions of toilers so entirely unbearable as it is even in the days now passing over us. It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die,—the last exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot of Pain. But it is to live miserable we know not why; to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt in with a cold universal Laissez-faire: it is to die slowly all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice, as in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and remains forever intolerable to all men whom God has made. Do we wonder at French Revolutions, Chartisms, Revolts of Three Days? The times, if we will consider them, are really unexampled.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life , Men , Hunger , God

“I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America… As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent— doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies— to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!… I call upon the honour of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at THE DISGRACE OF HIS COUNTRY! In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion, the Protestant religion of his country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords (18 November, 1777), responding to a speech by Henry Howard, 12th Earl of Suffolk, who spoke in favour of the war against the American colonists. Suffolk was a descendant of Howard of Effingham, who led the English navy against the Spanish Armada. Effingham had commissioned a series of tapestries on the defeat of the Armada, and sold them to King James I. Since 1650 they were hung in the House of Lords, where they remained until destroyed by fire in 1834.
William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 150-6.

Religion , Effort , Victory , Country

“In the course of my twenty years career as an assailant of special privilege, I have attacked pretty nearly every important interest in America. The statements I have made, if false, would have been enough to deprive me of a thousand times all the property I ever owned, and to have sent me to prison for a thousand times a normal man's life. I have been called a liar on many occasions, needless to say; but never once in all these twenty years has one of my enemies ventured to bring me into a court of law, and to submit the issue between us to a jury of American citizens.”

Upton Sinclair book The Brass Check

The Brass Check (1919)

Life , Law , Time , Falseness

“Modernist tasks and liberties have stirred up a canny diffidence among painters of the largest accomplishment when pressed to talk about their art. It appears unseemly, or naive, to have much to say about the pictures or to attach to them any explicit "program." No more theories expounding an ideal way of painting. And, as statements wither and with them counter-statements, hardly anything in the way of provocation either. Decorum suggests that artists sound somewhat trapped when being drawn out, and venturing a few cagey glimpses of intention.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"About Hodgkin," from Howard Hodgkin Paintings edited by Michael Auping (1995), p. 105,

Art , Way , Appearance , Painting

“A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses!”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Life , Way , Business

“We had had the help during the past 20 months…of a number of Dominion statesmen. Our touch with those who guided the destinies of the Commonwealth was very close and constant. That was very right and necessary, because we were all engaged in the same great venture, we were all defending a common heritage—the cause of freedom and democracy. The links which united us with the free peoples of the Commonwealth proved their strength, and as we stood together in war so we should stand together in peace to create a new and better world.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the 65th anniversary luncheon of the United Wards' Club in the Connaught Rooms, London (23 February 1942), quoted in The Times (24 February 1942), p. 2.
War Cabinet

War , People , World , Peace