Quotes about view (3930 quotes, page 27)

“Depression and hopelessness are not the only reasons terminally ill patients wish to end their lives. Many individuals see nothing undignified about choosing to end their lives at the time and manner of their choosing — and many view such a choice as the meaningful culmination of a good life.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

"Is it compassionate to prohibit suicide?," http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/letters/bal-ed.le.letters17m11mar17,0,7530016.storyThe Baltimore Sun (2009-03-17)

Life , Time

“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

The Lost World (1995)

Food , Behavior , Question , Thinking

“My thoughts are with the victims of this morning’s despicable, unprovoked attack on the Republican congressional softball team. Representative Scalise is a friend, and my heart goes out to him and his family. Steve and I wish him and the others wounded a speedy recovery. They remain in our thoughts and prayers. I also want to commend the heroic actions of the Capitol Police officers who clearly prevented today’s attack from being a much bigger tragedy. I am aware that the suspect recently made vile comments about me on social media. It also appears that the suspect targeted members of congress specifically because he disagreed with their views. We should not allow our political differences to escalate to violent attacks. We must all refuse to allow the politics of our country to be defined in this way. Now more than ever, we must unite as a one nation under God. It is incumbent upon all of us to work together in a civil and productive way, even when we disagree.”

Karen Handel (1962) American politician

Karen Handel’s Statement On Today’s Attack In Virginia https://karenhandel.com/karen-handels-statement-todays-attack-virginia/ (June 14, 2017)

God , Family , Way , Appearance

“[We] will discuss Soul and Body, the doctrine of God, and Ethics. …We shall find that Leibniz no longer shows great originality, but tends, with slight alterations of phraseology, to adopt (without acknowledgment) the views of the decried Spinoza. We shall find also many more minor inconsistencies than in the earlier part of [Leibniz's] system, these being due chiefly to the desire to avoid the impieties of the Jewish Atheist, and the still greater impieties to which Leibniz's own logic should have led him.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz https://archive.org/details/cu31924052172271 (1900) Ch. 1, Leibniz's Premisses, p, 5.
M - R

God , Soul , Parting

“It is a shame. A shame! If you believe this is a bad idea to provide health care — then vote no! But don't give me the cowardly view that "Oh, if it was a different procedure."”

Anthony Weiner (1964) American politician

Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O_GRkMZJn4 on the floor of the House, on the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act (July 29, 2010)

Health , Idea

“Cause when you got love, like we got love.
I'm holding on to heaven, holding onto you.
When you got one, like I got one.
Anyway you looking, it's a hell of a view.
Don't know where we're gonna be, but I know we're be sitting on top of the world.
So keep hanging onto me.
Yeah, don't you wanna be sitting on top of the world?
Top of the world.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Top of the World
Song lyrics, Damn Country Music (2015)

Love , World , Hell

“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not. And the Government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation, because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia he does not need a motion in the House of Representatives; he needs a mirror.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Misogyny speech

People , Hope , Housing

“… Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines. They're both. This is something usually not acknowledged and there's probably a good reason why: because if this were in one's consciousness, then one would be a bit more immune to brainwashing — assuming brainwashing is the intent.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

1990s, Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere, 1998

World , Education , History

“The old view was that delicacy of language was part of the nature, the sacred nature, of eros and that to speak about it in any other way would be to misunderstand it. What has disappeared is the risk and the hope of human connectedness embedded in eros. Ours is a language that reduces the longing for an other to the need for individual, private satisfaction and safety.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

Source: Love and Friendship (1993), pp. 13-14.

Hope , Way , Nature , Parting

“The Founders also recognized, I think necessarily and certainly at the time, that people with Government service who had served in the legislative branch or served in the executive branch would become judges--Chief Justice Marshall, for example--would have backgrounds that involved Government service or political service. But they also had confidence in the ability of people in our system, once they became judges and put on the black robes, to decide cases fairly and impartially. And that's the way that system has worked for more than two centuries. And I know there has been some discussion about that, but that's the way the system has worked in terms of deciding cases fairly and impartially and not based on political of personal views.”

Brett Kavanaugh (1965) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination OF Brett M. Kavanaugh to be Ciruit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit https://www.congress.gov/108/chrg/shrg24853/CHRG-108shrg24853.htm (April 27, 2004)

People , Justice , Way , Confidence

“We have a tendency to romanticize independence. Most business literature still views autonomy as a virtue, as though communication, teamwork, and cooperation were lesser values.”

Keith Ferrazzi (1966) American businessman and writer

Never Eat Alone

Communication , Literature , Business

“Independent of the relative intrinsic merits of the w:By-lawordinances proposed, promulgating these ordinances would appear to be inappropriate and contrary to the canons of constitutional propriety in view of circumstances existing at this particular juncture.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

When ordinances were proposed to be introduced with the approval of the President on issues of shortening the poll campaign from three weeks to two weeks, and providing for reservation for Dalit Christians.
Source: Shubhankar Dam Presidential Legislation in India: The Law and Practice of Ordinances http://books.google.co.in/books?id=RvxGAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA218, Cambridge University Press, 16 December 2013, p. 218

Appearance

“Consider the case of a person who holds a view with probability 1. Then coherence says that it is no use having a debate with them because nothing will change their mind.”

Dennis Lindley (1923–2013) British statistician

6. Bayes Rule. p. 91.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)

Change , Personality

“I turned to Brecht and asked him why, if he felt the way he did about Jerome and the other American Communists, he kept on collaborating with them, particularly in view of their apparent approval or indifference to what was happening in the Soviet Union. […] Brecht shrugged his shoulders and kept on making invidious remarks about the American Communist Party and asserted that only the Soviet Union and its Communist Party mattered. […] But I argued… it was the Kremlin and above all Stalin himself who were responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of the opposition and their dependents. It was at this point that he said in words I have never forgotten, 'As for them, the more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' I was so taken aback that I thought I had misheard him. 'What are you saying?' I asked. He calmly repeated himself, 'The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot.' […] I was stunned by his words. 'Why? Why?' I exclaimed. All he did was smile at me in a nervous sort of way. I waited, but he said nothing after I repeated my question. I got up, went into the next room, and fetched his hat and coat. When I returned, he was still sitting in his chair, holding a drink in his hand. When he saw me with his hat and coat, he looked surprised. He put his glass down, rose, and with a sickly smile took his hat and coat and left. Neither of us said a word. I never saw him again.”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

Out of Step (1985)

Smile , Way , Drink , Question

“Could the Aboriginal and the British cultures have been reconciled when they first met? The prevailing view is that they could have signed a treaty and found a way of living together in relative harmony. I am not persuaded. The two confronting cultures, whether first living side by side at Sydney in 1788 or at Perth in 1829, had little in common except that they were the product of human beings. Their languages and religions differed. Their attitude to marriage, family, property and individual wealth, their economic and political systems, their way of fighting, and their thoughts about life and death, were far apart. In the world today no two cultures are so far apart as those that lived side by side in many Australian regions after 1788. Mecca and Washington today have far more in common than did the paternal Governor Phillip and the Aborigines whom he met in Sydney in 1788.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"Geoffrey Blainey: I can see parts of our history with fresh eyes," The Australian (February 21, 2015)

Life , Death , Marriage , World

“[A] man who contradicts himself may have succeeded in exercising his vocal chords. But from the point of view of imparting information, of communicating facts (or falsehoods) it is as if he had never opened his mouth. He utters words, but does not say anything.”

P. F. Strawson (1919–2006) British philosopher

Source: Introduction to Logical Theory (1952), p. 2.

Exercises , Communication

“As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

Learning

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History Vol 3 1837 translated by ES Haldane and Francis H. Simson) first translated 1896 P. 91-92
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 3

Life , God , Justice , Way

“You have to not be arrogant and say you know better, and you have to not thwart their creativity because they are creative people and they have a very different point-of-view than a filmmaker on how to get people in the seats. So, it’s a balance, like everything in life, between keeping your focus and being overly constricting. So, if you want to be a filmmaker, you have to realize what a long arbiter a movie is cut of and shaped on, how many phases there are to it, and how long you have to be totally focused on your story and the movie itself, and how it seemed one way but making a film is really trench warfare.”

Rob Cohen (1949) American film director, producer and writer

Interview: Rob Cohen – Director (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) http://horrornews.net/45720/interview-rob-cohen-director-the-mummy-tomb-of-the-dragon-emperor/ (December 16, 2008)

Life , People , Way

“There were many reasons why we did not gain complete success at Arnhem. The following in my view were the main ones. First. The operation was not regarded at Supreme Headquarters as the spearhead of a major Allied movement on the northern flank designed to isolate, and finally to occupy, the Ruhr - the one objective in the West which the Germans could not afford to lose. There is no doubt in my mind that Eisenhower always wanted to give priority to the northern thrust and to scale down the southern one. He ordered this to be done, and he thought that it was being done. It was not being done. Second. The airborne forces at Arnhem were dropped too far away from the vital objective - the bridge. It was some hours before they reached it. I take the blame for this mistake. I should have ordered Second Army and 1st Airborne Corps to arrange that at least one complete Parachute Brigade was dropped quite close to the bridge, so that it could have been captured in a matter of minutes and its defence soundly organised with time to spare. I did not do so. Third. The weather. This turned against us after the first day and we could not carry out much of the later airborne programme. But weather is always an uncertain factor, in war and in peace. This uncertainty we all accepted. It could only have been offset, and the operation made a certainty, by allotting additional resources to the project, so that it became an Allied and not merely a British project. Fourth. The 2nd S. S. Panzer Corps was refitting in the Arnhem area, having limped up there after its mauling in Normandy. We knew it was there. But we were wrong in supposing that it could not fight effectively; its battle state was far beyond our expectation. It was quickly brought into action against the 1st Airborne Division.”

Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887–1976) British Army officer, Commander of Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein

Concerning Operation Market Garden in his autobiography, 'The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery' (1958)

War , Peace , Time , Success

“Men who have sacrifice their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view - which scorn ("fait fi", Fr.) virtue and altruism - regarded as insane or fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heros who do honour ("qui honorent", Fr.) humanity.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 38.

Men , Truth , Fools

“To the extent that we accept this view, we effectively mistake ourselves for highly dimorphic animals such as peacocks or deer.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 153

Animals

“Science views the blood-building and character-influencing ur-organism "water" merely as a chemical compound and provides millions of people with a liquid prepared from this point of view, which is everything but healthy water.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Callum Coats: Water Wizard

People , Water , Science

“It is unusual to notify the two Houses of Congress by message of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view, however, of the vast importance of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable.”

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

1870s, Message to the Senate and House of Representatives (1870)

Departure , Parting , Housing

“Things will be restored to their proper order. The guilty will not triumph; will not escape the general opprobrium, nor the punishment which is due to their crimes: and an ample recompense will be given to the just man, in the clear and distinct view of an astonished and admiring universe.”

Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742) French Catholic bishop and famous preacher

On the Last Day

Universe

“For an exercise, then, imagine for a while that the subjective world of your thoughts, feelings, inner images and fantasies represent the 'rockbed reality' from which individual physical events emerge. Look at the world for a change from the inside out, so to speak. Imagine that physical experience is somehow the materialization of your own subjective reality. Forget what you have learned about reactions and stimuli. Ignore for a time everything you have believed and see your thoughts as the real events. Try to view normal physical occurrences as the concrete physical reactions in space and time to your own feelings and beliefs. For indeed your subjective world causes your physical experience.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 830, Page 148
The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, (1981)

World , Feeling , Exercises , Imagination

“From Keynes' point of view the economic system, before the war failed in its solution of the unemployment problem”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

The Keynesian Revolution. Vol. 19. New York: Macmillan, 1947/66. p. 166

War , Problem

“Readers of histories and novels can hardly fail to be struck by their similarities. There are many histories that could pass for novels, and many novels that could pass for histories, considered in purely formal (or, I should say, formalist) terms. Viewed simply as verbal artifacts histories and novels are indistinguishable from one another. We cannot easily distinguish between them on formal grounds unless we approach them with specific preconceptions about the kinds of truths that each is supposed to deal in. But the aim of the writer of a novel must be the same as that of the writer of a history.”

Hayden White (1928–2018) American historian

"The fictions of factual representation"

Truth , History

“The schizophrenic is seen to be afraid of the nihilistic void that … will remain when a rigid world-view is discarded.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

[describing the implications of Ehrenzweig’s theory] p. 95, note
Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

World

“Every system of law is a system of education, and, in extending legal sanction to the scientific torture of animals, the State educates the nation in a false view of the relations of man to the lower creatures, encourages selfishness and cruelty and the disregard of the rights of the weak by the strong.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Source: The Modern Rack (1889), Ch. XV: Four Reasons for Total Prohibition of Vivisection, pp. 223-224

Education , Law , Strong , Animals

“We have come here to dedicate a cornerstone that was laid by the hand of the Almighty. On this towering wall of Rushmore, in the heart of the Black Hills, is to be inscribed a memorial which will represent some of the outstanding features of four of our Presidents, laid on by the hand of a great artist in sculpture. This memorial will crown the height of land between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Seaboard, where coming generations may view it for all time.”

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

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

Mountain , Memory , Time , Heart

“Snow had fallen and from the museum [in Pittsburgh, The ] you had a beautiful view of a valley with a railway, through some sheds, etc. But I could not finish it, and today, Sunday, I went back there again, but then the snow was already so far away that I could not make anything of it any more. It is a pity. Otherwise I could have sold something. [The painting was sold to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1934] (translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek)”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Er was namelijk sneeuw gevallen en uit het museum [in Pittsburgh, Breitner nam deel aan een jury en maakte vanuit een raam aan de achterzijde van het Carnegie Institute enkele schetsen en begon aan een schilderij] had men een prachtig gezicht op een dal met een spoorweg, door wat loodsen, enz. Maar ik kon 't niet afkrijgen, en vandaag, zondag, was ik er weer heengegaan, maar toen was de sneeuw al zoo ver dat ik [er] niets meer van kon maken. Het is wel jammer. Anders had ik nog wat kunnen verkoopen misschien. [Het schilderij is in 1934 verkocht aan het Stedelijk museum Amsterdam.]
In Breitner' letter to his wife, 1909, from Pittsburgh; as cited in George Hendrik Breitner in Amsterdam, J. F. Heijbroek, Erik Schmitz; uitgeverij THOTH, Bussum, 2014, p. 22
Breitner took part in an art-jury in Pittsburgh in 1909. He started to make some sketches from a window at the back-side of the Carnegie Institute and later the painting]
1900 - 1923

Beauty , Painting

“When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

First lines of Prologue
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

“When one is short, one should stand on a box to get a better view. The Twin Towers is [sic] to our ego what the box is to the shorties.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

Clearly Islam the religion is not the cause of terrorism. Islam, as I said, is a religion of peace. However through the centuries, deviations from the true teachings of Islam take place. And so [people who call themselves] "Muslims" kill despite the injunction of their religion against killing especially of innocent people.

Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things [Vol I]

Box

“The Keynesian Revolution was, in the form in which it succeeded in the United States, a revolution in method. This was not Keynes’s intent, nor is it the view of all of his most eminent followers. Yet if one does not view the revolution in this way, it is impossible to account for some of its most important features.”

Robert Lucas Jr. (1937) American economist

"After Keynesian macroeconomics" 1978

Way

“I disagree with Les. We always found good cunt at the Lyceum. Friendly cunt, clean cunt, spare cunt, jeans and knicker stuffed full of nice juicy hairy cunt, handfuls of cunt, palmful grabbing the cunt by the stem, or the root – infantile memories of cunt – backrow slides – slithery oily cunt, the cunt that breathes – the cunt that’s neatly wrapped in cotton, in silk, in nylon, that announces, that speaks or thrusts, that winks that’s squeezed in a triangle of furtive cloth backed by an arse that’s creamy, springy billowy cushiony tight, knicker lined, knicker skinned, circumscribed by flowers and cotton, by views, clinging knicker, juice ridden knicker, hot knicker, wet knicker, swelling vulva knicker, witty cunt, teeth smiling the eyes biting cunt, cultured cunt, culture vulture cunt, finger biting cunt, cunt that pours, cunt that spreads itself over your soft lips, that attacks, cunt that imagines – cunt you dream about, cunt you create as a Melba, a meringue with smooth sides – remembered from school boys’ smelly first cunt, first foreign cunt, amazing cunt – cunt that’s cruel. Cunt that protects itself and makes you want it even more cunt – cunt that smells of the air, of the earth, of bakeries, of old apples, of figs, of sweat of hands of sour yeast of fresh fish cunt. So – are we going Les? We might pick up a bit of crumpet.”

Steven Berkoff East

East (1975), Scene 17

School , Smile , Dreams , Imagination

“Let us consider, for a moment, the world as described by the physicist. It consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as waves, and are thus… of the same laminated structure as pearls or onions, and other wave forms called electromagnetic which it is convenient, by Occam’s razor, to consider as travelling through space with a standard velocity. All these appear bound by certain natural laws which indicate the form of their relationship.
Now the physicist himself, who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particulars he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and to record.
Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself.
This is indeed amazing.
Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all.
But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i. e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself.”

G. Spencer-Brown (1923–2016) British mathematician

Source: Laws of Form, (1969), p. 104-05; as cited in: David Phillip Barndollar (2004) The Poetics of Complexity and the Modern Long Poem https://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2004/barndollardp50540/barndollardp50540.pdf, The University of Texas at Austin, p. 12-13.

World , Law , Way , Travel

“From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a 'disutility'; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice.”

E. F. Schumacher book A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed

“I am bound to say that it took me a long time to understand what he meant. He began by saying that everybody thought of Space as an 'empty homogeneous medium.' 'Never mind at present what the ultimate constituents of that medium are. We take it as a finished product, and we think of it as mere extension, something without any quality at all. That is the view of civilised man. You will find all the philosophers taking it for granted. Yes, but every living thing does not take that view.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Space (1912)

Understanding , Thinking , Time

“Have we not the right to our own views, and own interpretations, and own creeds, and own Truths equal to those that proceeded us? Must we forever wear the cast-off garments of past ages?”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

Truth , Age , Past

“Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 534

Disease

“The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing "imperfect" institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements.”

Harold Demsetz (1930–2019) American economist

Cited in: Eggertsson (1990; 22)
"Information and Efficiency: Another Viewpoint." (1969)

“In the application of the ordinary principles of geometry and trigonometry to such Astronomical measures… it may sometimes be expedient to resolve the process into several successive steps, and these steps may perhaps require different kinds of treatment. But… all are simple and within ordinary comprehension, and the only complexity arises from the circumstance that the student may find it necessary to have a clear view of several such steps at once…”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

Success

“The anarchist, moreover, does not believe that any considerable proposition of human beings will promptly turn into rogues and adventuresses, sots and strumpets, as soon as they find themselves free to do so; but quite the contrary. It seems to be a fond notion with the legalists and authoritarians that the vast majority of mankind would at once begin to thieve and murder and generally misconduct itself if the restraints of law and authority were removed. The anarchist, whose opportunities to view mankind in its natural state are perhaps as good as the legalist’s, regards this belief as devoid of foundation.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: On Doing the Right Thing and Other Essays (1928), p. 176

Law , Nature

“The Lord himself hath led him with his own Almighty hand.
He hath caused him to spring from a trunk without root, and planted him again in a distant and more delightful spot, and caused him to rise up to a considerable tree.
Inspired him with an inclination for science so passionate as to become the most gratifying of all others.
Given him all the means he could either wish for, or enjoy, of attaining the objects he had in view.
Favoured him in such a manner that even the not obtaining of what he wished for, ultimately turned out to his great advantage.
Caused him to be received into favour by the "Mœcenates Scientiarum"; by the greatest men in the kingdom; and by the Royal Family.
Given him an advantageous and honourable post, the very one that, above all others in the world, he had wished for.
Given him the wife for whom he most wished, and who managed his household affairs whilst he was engaged in laborious studies.
Given him children who have turned out good and virtuous.
Given him a son for his successor in office.
Given him the largest collection of plants that ever existed in the world, and his greatest delight.
Given him lands and other property, so that though there has been nothing superfluous, nothing has he wanted.
Honoured him with the titles of Archiater, Knight, Nobleman, and with Distinction in the learned world.
Protected him from fire.
Preserved his life above 60 years.
Permitted him to visit his secret council-chambers.
Permitted him to see more of the creation than any mortal before him. Given him greater knowledge of natural history than any one had hitherto acquired.
The Lord hath been with him whithersoever he hath walked, and hath cut off all his enemies from before him, and hath made him a name, like the name of the great men that are in the earth. 1 Chron. xvn. 8.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

As quoted in The Annual Review and History of Literature http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=hx0ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Lord%20himself%20hath%20led%20him%20with%20his%20own%20Almighty%20hand%22&f=false (1806), by Arthur Aikin, T. N. Longman and O. Rees, p. 472.
Also found in Life of Linnaeus https://archive.org/stream/lifeoflinnaeus00brigiala#page/176/mode/2up/search/endeavoured (1858), by J. Van Voorst & Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, London. pp. 176-177.
Linnaeus Diary

Life , Men , Children , Secret

“Go to the United States, into Europe, or wherever you can come across men who have been in the midst of this people, and one will tell you that we are a poor, ignorant, deluded people; the next will tell you that we are the most industrious and intelligent people on the earth, and are destined to rise to eminence as a nation, and spread, and continue to spread, until we revolutionize the whole earth. If you pass on to the third man, and inquire what he thinks of the "Mormons," he will say they are fools, duped and led astray by Joe Smith, who was a knave, a false Prophet, and a money digger. Why is all this? It is because there is a spirit in man. And when the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached on the earth, and the kingdom of God is established, there is also a spirit in these things, and an Almighty spirit too. When these two spirits come in contact one with the other, the spirit of the Gospel reflects light upon the spirit which God has placed in man, and wakes him up to a consciousness of his true state, which makes him afraid he will be condemned, for he perceives at once that "Mormonism" is true. "Our craft is in danger," is the first thought that strikes the wicked and dishonest of mankind, when the light of truth shines upon them. Say they, "If these people called Latter-day Saints are correct in their views, the whole world must be wrong, and what will become of our time-honoured institutions, and of our influence, which we have swayed successfully over the minds of the people for ages. This Mormonism must be put down."”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 1:187-188 (June 19, 1853)
1850s

Men , Money , God , People

“The view of things [called Pantheism] … — that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; — this theory … may be carried back to the remotest antiquity. It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the Upanishads. There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated. That such was, moreover, the fount whence Pythagoras drew his wisdom, cannot be doubted … That it formed practically the central point in the whole philosophy of the Eleatic School, is likewise a familiar fact. Later on, the New Platonists were steeped in the same … In the ninth century we find it unexpectedly appearing in Europe. It kindles the spirit of no less a divine than Johannes Scotus Erigena, who endeavours to clothe it with the forms and terminology of the Christian religion. Among the Mohammedans we detect it again in the rapt mysticism of the Sufi. In the West Giordano Bruno cannot resist the impulse to utter it aloud; but his reward is a death of shame and torture. And at the same time we find the Christian Mystics losing themselves in it, against their own will and intention, whenever and wherever we read of them! Spinoza's name is identified with it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 269 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/269/mode/2up-272
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Life , Death , Wisdom , Books

“When it comes to critical questions of religion, freedom of conscience, belief and speech is a paper tiger in Nigeria. In fact, religion is presented as inadmissible of criticism, of opposing views and opinions whether it is the status of women, of children, gay, or of non-believers. Religious positions are cast on stones. Views that are critical of religion easily get framed as blasphemy, which is a crime under Sharia law and is punishable by death or imprisonment.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

Death , Women , Children , Religion

“Greatness loves itself, and all healthy instincts decline to flagellate themselves daily with the whip of altruism. What is great must will to do more than its mere duty; it must give, make others happy, and, be it at the cost of itself, its own wellbeing, its own money or life, it must will to pour forth its blessing over others, to the extent even of self-sacrifice—but not, as Christianity demands, from unegoistic motives; the impulse must come from a sense of pleasure, from overflowing energy, from need of bloodletting, so as to unburden the full heart. All acts then derived from conscience and duty, or done with a wry countenance out of obedience to the Categorical Imperative, seem to the great man, from his point of view, through this very fact contemptible, even as he has an unsurmountable prejudice against men and nations who are always prating of those words, conscience and duty.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 81.

Love , Life , Men , Money

“The Duchess of Cumberland smiled at the little sorcerer. “Really, Master Dandro,” she said. “That’s certainly an orthodox view.”
Master Dandro turned to her and smiled a rabbity smile. “Orthodoxy is my only doxy,” he said.”

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 139)

Smile

“I … view deviance as the product of a transaction that takes place between some social group and one who is viewed by that group as a rule-breaker. I will be less concerned with the personal and social characteristics of deviants than with the process by which they come to be thought of as outsiders and their reactions to that judgment.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), p. 10.

Personality

“For those who are still merely vegetarian and not yet vegan, I ask, what in heaven's name are you waiting for? If you are trying to avoid the health pitfalls of eating carcasses—high fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol content; lack of fiber; deficiency of vitamins and enzymes; abundance of stored toxins—well, then take a good look at the dairy you're eating. Dairy is basically liquid meat without the iron. … Milk should be viewed as no more or less than what it is: a delivery system for fat, cholesterol, blood, pus, antibiotics, and carcinogenic growth hormones. … If your reason for abstaining from meat has more to do with an emotional attachment to animals than a concern for your health, then understand that dairy cows are truly sick, miserable, abused creatures … Someone who has become vegetarian for emotional reasons ought to switch to the vegan diet as swiftly and surely as someone brought to vegetarianism for reasons of health.”

Howard F. Lyman (1938) American activist

Source: No More Bull! (2005), Ch. 6: Message for My Fellow Vegetarians and Vegans, pp. 79-80

Health , Understanding , Waiting , Animals

“He is the embodiment of Fleet Street bullying, using his newspaper to peddle his Little-England, curtain-twitching Alan Partridgesque view of the world, which manages to combine sanctimonious, pompous moralising and prurient, voyeuristic, judgmental obsession, like a Victorian father masturbating secretly in his bedroom.”

Steve Coogan (1965) English actor and comedian

on Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre in We've been betrayed by David Cameron http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/29/we-have-been-betrayed-by-cameron, The Guardian (2012)

World

“The imbalance between developed and underdeveloped countries - caused by the relationships of dependence - becomes more acute if the cultural point of view is taken into consideration.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Source: A Theology of Liberation - 15th Anniversary Edition, Chapter Six, The Process Of Liberation In Latin America, p. 53

Dependency , Country

“Among organization theorists general, if not universal agreement obtains that it is proper to view the development of organization theory as divided into three periods. Conventionally, this "history" is regarded as beginning early in this century; and the three periods are customarily are designed by the terms classic, neo-classic and modern… The classical period has its beginning, in the conventional view, with Frederick W. Taylor and Henri Fayol… [and] reaches its high point in the thirties with the work of James Mooney and of the editors and authors of the Paper in the Science of Administration. The neo-classical wave is seen as beginning with the Hawthorne experiments in the late twenties. These experiments challenge the formality and rationality of classical theory with the "discovery"of human relations.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Dwight Waldo (1978), "Organization Theory: Revisiting the Elephant," Public Administration Review, 38 (November/December): p. 589

History , Universe , Science

“The nasty thing about the availability bias is that it insidiously distorts our view of the world by distorting our perception of past events and our environment.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 2, The Laws Of Truths And Half - Truths, p. 28

World , Past

“However, the voice of the rationalist is a sound social reaction, it is an act of self-defense by society against the dangers of being dominated by uncontrollable forces such as a saint proclaiming a revelation or a madman affirming the products of his sick imagination, and finally a fraud who wants to convert others to his views for the sake of his egoistic and unworthy purposes. It is better to rely on the safe but modest nourishment of reason than, in fear of missing the voice of ‘Truth’, to let oneself be fed with all sorts of uncontrollable nourishment which may more often be poisonous than healthy and beneficial.”

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) Philosopher, logician

Source: Problems and theories of philosophy, 1949, p. 49, as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016.

Truth , Fear , Imagination , Fraud

“To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from the Port of London; and having brought a chart of the Thames on deck at his first setting out, should obstinately use no other for the whole voyage.”

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

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

“[W]e should be clear that neither genuine religious nor genuine moral impulses will ever be expressed in terms that tie the two essentially together. If you view religion as necessary for ethics, you’ve reduced us to the ethical level of 4 year olds. "If you follow these commandments you’ll go to heaven, if you don’t' you'll burn in hell" is just a spectacular version of the carrots and sticks with which you raise your children.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

Children , Religion , Hell

“And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird's first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

World , Bird

“I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy- five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted—damp washcloths, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course—in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father’s small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 36

Life , Women , Secret , World

“In view of all the foregoing reasons, I cannot but think the case conclusive, that neither form of the Doctrine of Authority can be maintained. We should abandon, as consistent thinkers, and still more as consistent Christians, the imperative authority both of Church Tradition and of Scripture. There is nothing left, then, but the Doctrine of Reason — the Method of Conviction as the only real method of determining religious belief and practice, resting on the use of the human rational powers taken in their entire compass.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.260

Thinking

“Difficult as the course is, the dangers do not come from the difficulties; they come from extremists in India and at home. I will tell you what I mean. I am firmly convinced that such writings as appear in such papers as the Daily Mail will do more to lose India for the British Empire, will do more to cause a revolutionary spirit, than anything that can be done in any way by anyone else. I got many letters, I need hardly say, of all points of view. I had a very characteristic one last week… It was from a colonel; he was an old man, you could tell that by his writing; and he used this phrase: He said, "You and Lord Irwin are negrophiles." Perhaps he was a member of the United Empire party. That is not the way to cement the Empire. This sort of thing, and the spirit behind it, will break up our Empire infallibly, and that is what I am out to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/mar/12/india in the House of Commons (12 March 1931).
1931

Way , Home , Appearance , Fight

“It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 10.

Time , Happiness

“The engines that have driven poetry's institutional success — the explosion of academic writing programs, the proliferation of subsidized magazines and presses, the emergence of a creative-writing career track, and the migration of American literary culture to the university — have unwittingly contributed to its disappearance from public view.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Universe , Success

“Pagan renaissance is overdue. It is necessary for Europe to heal its psyche. Under Christianity, Europe learned to reject its ancestors, its past, which cannot be good for its future also. Europe became sick because it tore apart from its own heritage, it had to deny its very roots. If Europe is to be healed spiritually, it must recover its spiritual past--at least, it should not hold it in such dishonor…. For self-recovery, these countries have to revive their old gods. But this is a task which cannot be done mechanically. They have to recapture the consciousness which expressed itself in the language of many gods… In my book, The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods, I spoke of a new kind of pilgrimage: a return to the time of the Gods. Meanwhile, European scholars can do a lot. They should write a history of Europe from the Pagan point of view, which would show how profoundly persecuted Paganism was. They should compile a directory of Pagan temples destroyed, Pagan groves and sacred spots desecrated. European Pagans should also revive some of these sites as their places of pilgrimage.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Interview in the June, 1996, issue of Antaios, http://web.archive.org/web/20080407092807/https://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1999/7/1999-7-07.shtml

God , Books , History , Learning

“This Court, limited in function in accordance with that premise, does not serve its high purpose when it exceeds its authority, even to satisfy justified impatience with the slow workings of the political process. For when, in the name of constitutional interpretation, the Court adds something to the Constitution that was deliberately excluded from it, the Court, in reality, substitutes its view of what should be so for the amending process.”

John Marshall Harlan II (1899–1971) American judge and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1899-1971)

Dissenting in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 624-25 (1964).

Reality

“Not one word is said here of acausality, wave mechanics, indeterminacy relations, complementarity, … etc. Why doesn’t he talk about what he knows instead of trespassing on the professional philosopher’s preserves? Ne sutor supra crepidam. On this I can cheerfully justify myself: because I do not think that these things have as much connection as is currently supposed with a philosophical view of the world.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Source: My View of the World (1951), pp. vii-viii

World , Thinking

“The Labour Party is the sister Party for the Democrats and their progressive views are the ones that we are most aligned with.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

On Question Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etg5lm92Io8, 18 September, 2008.

Sister

“The Dutch Company, actuated solely by the spirit of gain, and viewing their [Javan] subjects, with less regard or consideration than a West India planter formerly viewed a gang upon his estate, because the latter had paid the purchase money of human property, which the other had not, employed all the existing machinery of despotism to squeeze from the people their utmost mite of contribution, the last dregs of their labor, and thus aggravated the evils of a capricious and semi-barbarous Government, by working it with all the practised ingenuity of politicians, and all the monopolizing selfishness of traders.”

Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) British statesman who founded Singapore

T.S. Raffles, The History of Java (London 1871), book 1, pg. 168. Here as quoted in the New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853 by Karl Marx https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm.

Money , People , Evil , Selfishness

“He viewed humour as a relaxing introduction to many situations. "It is, of course, completely inappropriate in some… but in the end, you know, if you were serious in this job you'd go mad."”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

Source: Gliding on the Lino - The Wit of David Lange, compiled by David Barber, 1987.

Madness

“I do not sell out my personality. I represent views. I utter opinions. Let us talk about that! That should be the topic, not my personality! It is only a frame. A framework. Which does not deserve either attention, adoration, or love.”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Én nem a személyiségemet árulom. Én álláspontokat képviselek. Véleményt mondok. Erről beszéljünk! Ez legyen a téma, ne az én egyéniségem! Az egy váz. Egy keretrendszer. Nem érdemes sem figyelemre, sem rajongásra, sem szeretetre. (Puzsér Róbert: "Én egy őrkutya vagyok"
Szily Nóra interjúja, life.hu, 2012. április 10.)
Quotes from him, Interviews

Love , Personality

“It is to the influence of the opinion of those whom the multitude [the populous] judges best informed, and to whom it has been accustomed to give its confidence in regard to the most important matters of life, that the propagation of those errors is due, which in times of ignorance, have covered the face of the earth. Magic and astrology offer us two great examples. These errors… having for a basis only universal credence, have maintained themselves during a very long time; but at last the progress of science has destroyed them in the minds of enlightened men, whose opinion consequently has caused them to disappear… through the power of imitation and habit which had so generally spread them… This power, the richest resource of the moral world, establishes and conserves in a whole nation ideas entirely contrary to those… elsewhere… What indulgence ought we not then to have for opinions different from ours, when this difference often depends only upon the various points of view where circumstances have placed us! Let us enlighten those whom we judge insufficiently instructed; but first let us examine critically our own opinions, and weigh with impartiality, their respective probabilities.”

Pierre-Simon Laplace book Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

p, 125
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)

Life , Men , World , Error

“Kennaston could find in the past — even he, who was privileged to view the past in its actuality, rather than through the distorting media of books and national pride — no suggestion as to what, if anything, he was expected to do while his physical life lasted, or to what, if anything, this life was a prelude. Yet that to-day was only a dull overture to to-morrow seemed in mankind an instinctive belief. All life everywhere, as all people spent it, was in preparation for something that was to happen to-morrow.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 27 : Evolution of a Vestryman

Life , People , Books , Past

“Tonight's viewing has more Box Office appeal than a Baz Luhrmann masterpiece”

Simon Hill (1967) Australian television presenter

31st of November, 2008, Premier League coverage Foxsports
Quotes from His time at Foxsports

Box

“"Be in high-growth markets." In the old economic order, in the age of market share, volume growth was a guarantor of success. Growth was what we were taught to pursue. It created higher profits for all, including market share laggards, companies with poor business designs, and companies that were poorly managed. A rising tide raised all boats. One manager articulated the classic view: "There are no management problems that volume growth can't solve. Even if we manage poorly, rising revenue helps cover the mistakes we made."”

Adrian Slywotzky (1951) American economist

Source: The Profit Zone (2007), p. 5.

Age , Business , Problem , Success

“Funny thing about Americans. They are the first to adopt weird lifestyles and radical views but they are the most conservative race on earth.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

Watergate Follies, p. 98
The Joke's Over (2006)

“When my dad died at the end of my sophomore year [at university], I stopped and took stock of my life. There was this real sense that my childhood was officially over. I decided I wanted to be an actor. I knew I was loved as a kid. The thing you can always rely on, your core person, comes from your family's attention and love. When my mother got sick, and I'd see her fight to survive, it gave me an early view of bravery and what life was about. I was able to prepare for it. Your mother dies, and you're eighteen, and you face a choice. Are you going to take drugs? Become a drunk? Or are you going to try to become more spiritual? Why not go with the thing that seems more positive? [pause] Why do I tend to be optimistic? Because the alternative is just crushing to my soul.”

Martin Short (1950) Canadian stand-up comedian

Parade Magazine; January 23rd, 2000

Love , Life , Family , Soul

“Success in the sociologists' aim might lead, in T. S. Eliot's phrase, to "systems so perfect that no one would need to be good." This view forgets that men long ago committed themselves to the endeavor to control their own collective behavior, not only in the ways sanctioned by the churches but in others, by making it to men's interest to do good. And they have increasingly based the endeavor on an understanding of natural laws of human behavior, those of economics, for example. So that the question is not: Shall this kind of control be undertaken? but: Where shall it stop? A sociologist might also argue that his religious critics have more faith in him than in their own doctrine, the doctrine that man is infinitely tough and resourceful and is not easily cheated of his freedom to sin. What God has given no man can take away, certainly no sociologist. More seriously, he might argue that the social sciences are not in train to eliminate morality but to make greater demands of it. A sociology that shows us unsuspected or not hitherto understood ways in which men are bound up with one another invites more refined answers to the question: "Am I my brother's keeper?"”

George C. Homans (1910–1989) American sociologist

George C. Homans (1956), "Giving a dog a bad name." in: The Listener, Vol. 56. p. 233; Reprinted in: George C. Homans (1962), Sentiments & activities; essays in social science https://archive.org/details/sentimentsactivi00homa, p. 117-8

Men , God , Faith , Law

“[intention to make a voyage of discovery through The Netherlands] … with the aim to apply it as a painter, as well as in my quality of entomologist [specialism, snout beetle].... what parts, provinces or regions of our country [ are] 'least' visited from an entomological point of view..?”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) [intentie tot het maken van een ontdekkingsreis door Holland] ..zowel met het doel van die op te nemen als schilder als in mijne qualiteit van entomoloog [specialisme snuitkevers].. ..welke gedeelten, provincieën of streken van ons land [zijn] 'het minst' uit entomologisch oogpunt bezocht..?
In a letter to his Entomologische friend {{w|nl:Samuel Constantinus Snellen van Vollenhoven|S.C. Snellen]], from Brussels, 18 Dec. 1870; as cited in Willem Roelofs 1822-1897 De Adem der natuur, ed. Marjan van Heteren & Robert-Jan te Rijdt; Thoth, Bussum, 2006, p. 14 - ISBN13 * 978 90 6868 432 2
1870's

Parting , Country

“To change the subject, he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot.”
“What about?”
“Free will.”
“Free will?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying not to fidget, a weird feeling in his head. “I reckon free will is bullshit.”
“You need to get some sleep, Spider.”
“No, no, I feel okay, more or less.”
“Free will,” she said, shaking her head.
“It’s an illusion. That’s all it is. Everything is already sorted out, every decision, every possibility, it’s all determined, scripted, whatever.”
Iris was looking at him as if she was worried. “Where’d all this come from?”
“I’ve been to the End of bloody Time, Iris. From that perspective, everything is done and settled. Basically, everything that could happen has happened. It’s all mapped out, documented, diagrammed, written up in great big books, and ignored.”
“You’re a crazy bastard, you know that, Spider?”
“Maybe not crazy enough,” he said.
Iris was still struggling for traction on the conversation. “You think everything is predetermined? Is that it? But what about—”
“No. You just think you have free will.”
“So, according to you,” Iris said, looking bewildered, “a guy who kills his wife was always going to kill her. She was always going to die.”
“From his point of view, he doesn’t know that, and neither does she, but yeah. She was always a goner, so to speak.”
“There is no way I can accept this,” she said. “It’s intolerable. It robs individual people of moral agency. According to you nobody chooses to do anything; they’re just following a script. That means nobody’s responsible for anything.”
“I said free will is an illusion. We think we’ve got moral agency, we think we make choices. It’s a perfect illusion. It just depends on your point of view.”
“It’s a bloody pathway to madness, I reckon,” Iris said.
“I dunno,” he said. “Right now, sitting here, thinking about everything, I think it makes a lot of sense. Kinda, anyway.””

K. A. Bedford book Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait

“Think you’ll find that’s just an illusion,” she said, and flashed a tiny smile.
Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 22 (pp. 271-272)

People , Books , Smile , Way

“The recent discoveries that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional severely undercut the social scientists' official view of the world because they establish that genetics may have played a possible substantial role alongside culture in shaping the differences between human populations.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

World

“The rhythmic pattern of the poem, which forces continuity of attention – incites a pleasurable compulsion to ‘follow’ – is either a tried metrical suasion-contrivance or a specially invented pattern of physical insistences, equally, if not more, binding in its effect on the reader. From a straight linguistic point of view, there is room for wonder if there is not latent vice in this environment in which pleasurable physically-compelled responses, produced by incidents of poetic utterance, are identified with the Good.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Promise of Words" in London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 17, p. 23

Pleasure

“Animals themselves cannot plead their cause, and those who plead it for them have no obvious financial or other selfish interest in the issue, although many may have “vested” their emotions in it. When we turn to special gain from maintaining existing practices, special loss if they were to be changed, we find a large number of groups whose views might be discounted. Butchers, furriers, hunters, cattlemen, chicken farmers, scientific experimenters on animals would, unless compensated, all have to suffer significant personal loss if we were to change our practices. They cannot therefore be expected to see the moral issue without the distortion of special interest. The scientists might claim that in their case their own interest coincides with a universal human interest, but I think the butcher and the furrier could make a similar claim[. ]”

Annette Baier (1929–2012) New Zealand philosopher

Source: Knowing Our Place in the Animal World, pp. 63-64

Thinking , Suffering , Universe , Change

“Creation exists for its Creator. Years of anthropocentrism have almost completely obscured this simple but fundamental point. What follows from this is that animals should not be seen simply as means to human ends. The key to grasping this theology is the abandoning of the common but deeply erroneous view that animals exist in a wholly instrumental relationship to human beings.”

Andrew Linzey (1952) British theologian and divine

Source: Animal Theology (1994), p. 24

Animals

“Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do – any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Existentialism Is a Humanism, lecture (1946)

Men , God , Hope , Understanding

“Higgins: Is [assassination] only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?
Enda Kenny: I know you are a good Christian man who has your job to do in here from a political point of view. Many of his victims in the twin towers in New York were of Irish descent or directly Irish.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

Enda Kenny apologising to Higgins after slandering him. Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ok-you-are-not-a-bin-laden-fan-taoiseach-tells-joe-higgins-2637835.html

“One of Collingwood's earliest attempts to define the aesthetic essence of art. His aim, he writes in the preface, is to state a general conception of art and develop its consequences. His conception is one already familiar through the writings of others -- "that art is as bottom neither more nor less than imagination" -- but from his observation he goes on to outline the various distinctions between subordinate conceptions of art, and to attempt to demonstrate their place in the general conception, and the place of both in life. He urges that the meaningfulness of art cannot be torn from the imaginative setting in which it is embedded, and that we must attempt to explain the process by which an artist reaches a particular point of view on reality.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Abstract
Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, 1925

Life , Art , Imagination , Reality

“One of the first people I met outside of the group [Pearl Jam] was this next human and I had no idea how he would affect my life and my views on music and my views on friendship and what a big impact he would have. These guys [the other members of Pearl Jam] know him much longer than me and his impact is profound. I'd like to introduce with great pleasure my old neighbor, Chris Cornell.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Eddie Vedder introducing Cornell during a Pearl Jam concert on September 4, 2011
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbG9CNCettk, PEARL JAM Chris Cornell *Hunger Strike* PJ20 night 2 @ Alpine Valley Temple of the Dog 9/4/2011, YouTube, 5 September 2011

Life , Music , Friendship , People

“Hobbes’s understanding of the dangers of anarchy resonates powerfully today. Liberal thinkers still see the unchecked power of the state as the chief danger to human freedom. Hobbes knew better: freedom’s worst enemy is anarchy, which is at its most destructive when it is a battleground of rival faiths. The sectarian death squads roaming Baghdad show that fundamentalism is itself a type of anarchy in which each prophet claims divine authority to rule. In well-governed societies, the power of faith is curbed. The state and the churches temper the claims of revelation and enforce peace. Where this kind is impossible, tyranny is better than being ruled by warring prophets. Hobbes is a more reliable guide to the present than the liberal thinkers who followed. Yet his view of human beings was too simple, and overly rationalistic. Assuming that humans dread violent death more than anything, he left out the most intractable sources of conflict. It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith – whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or – like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks – they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 262-3)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Life , Death , War , People

“For millennia, the dialectic of vilification and deification and, more generally, of invalidation and validation—excluding the individual from the group as an evil outsider or including him in it as a member in good standing—was cast in the imagery and rhetoric of magic and religion. … With the decline of the religious world view and the ascent of the scientific method during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the religious rhetoric of validation and invalidation was gradually replaced by the scientific. One of the most dramatic results of this transformation is the lexicon of psychiatric diagnoses functioning as a powerful, but largely unacknowledged, rhetoric of rejection and stigmatization.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"The Sane Slave: Social Control and Legal Psychiatry," American Criminal Law Review, vol. 10 (1971), p. 333.

World , Religion , Evil

“Unity was essential to victory. The Government contained men of varied views and varied backgrounds but united by a common will to victory, a common acceptance of a way of life. That was what we were fighting for. Our civilization had received terrible wounds. In the British Commonwealth, among the free nations, we cherished the ideals of peace. We believed we could build a new world, purged of evil, and more splendid and good. In that great faith and hope we must bend all our energies in unity together; and…[I have] absolute confidence that, dark as were the clouds to-day, we could already descry the dawn.”

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

Life , Men , World , Peace

“The only sure mode of acquiring sound ideas of our relation to the Creator is to begin with the study of ourselves, and to view God as a Father and Friend, dealing with us in precisely the same way as we would deal with others over whom we exercise authority. Conscience, that infallible Mentor "that sticketh closer than a brother," tells us that we are responsible beings; and in the domestic, as well as the social circle, we speedily feel the discipline and learn the lesson of rewards and punishments. The law written in man's heart points to the past as pregnant with events which may affect the future; and in the earnestness of his aspirations, and the activity of his search, he is gradually led to the mysterious history of his race. He learns that on tables of stone have been engraven the same law to which his heart responded; -that when all were dead, one died for all; and in the contemplation of the great sacrifice, he obtains a solution of the interesting problem of his individual destiny. The Sacred record which is now his guide, speaks to him of fore-knowledge and predestination, while, in perfect consistency, it records the ministration of descending spirits, and the holier communings of God with man. The Divine decrees no longer perplex him. They transcend, indeed, his Reason - but that Reason, the faithful interpreter of Conscience, does not falter in proclaiming the Freedom of his Will, and the Responsibility of his Actions.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

God , Faith , Law , Way

“In attempting to expose the views of another, one is forced to make one's own view appear infallible and absolute, which is a procedure altogether to be avoided if one is making a specifically non-evaluative investigation. The second possible approach is nevertheless to combine such a non-evaluative analysis with a definite epistemology. Viewed from the angle of this second approach there are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable knowledge — the one solution may be termed relationism, and the other relativism.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Knowledge , Problem , Appearance

“Summers’s outlook on economic policy can be summarized by the remark that he gave me some years ago: “If I had your views on economics, I would find another profession.” He meant that if free markets usually worked well and the government ought usually to stay out, then he would find economics to be an uninteresting occupation. Fortunately for Summers, he has always believed in the potential benefits from governmental activism, although the strength of this belief may have diminished over time.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 33

Time , Summer

“On any longer view, man is only fitfully committed to the rational — to thinking, seeing, learning, knowing. Believing is what he's really proud of.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"The voice of the lonely crowd" (2002)

Thinking , Learning

“I am keen to earn some money.... beginning to lose all hope... What I see most clearly is that my situation in impossible from every point of view.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

quote in her letter to sister Edma, circa 1872/73, after Manet had forgotten to show one of her paintings to art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, with her family and friends, Denish Rouart - newly introduced by Kathleen Adler and Tamer Garb; Camden Press London 1986, pp. 89-90
1871 - 1880

Money , Hope