Quotes about wake
page 8

Phil Brooks photo

“I told you so. Seems like I'm out here a lot saying that to you people, right? I know it seems like a lot, but the truth is i said that i would beat Jeff, and i did. I told you so. I said that i would get rid of Jeff Hardy FOREVER, and i did. I told you so. And then i said i would make The Undertaker tap out to the Anaconda Vice, and you laughed! But then i did just that. And contrary to what you people believe, i didn't come out here to brag about becoming the first and ONLY man in history to make the Phenom, The Undertaker, tap out. I came out here to confront The Undertaker. I came out here to confront The Undertaker in MY ring, or my yard, if you will. I came out here to stick MY World Heavyweight Championship in his face, and look him in the eye, and say to him, I TOLD YOU SO! But, of course, he's conveniently not here right now, so instead, i think i'll address all of you people. It's come to my attention that you people think I have been preaching to you. Alright, we'll call a space a spade. The truth is, YES i have. Because you people need a good preaching to. You people need somebody you can look up to, you need a leader who isn't morally corrupt, and you need someone that's righteous, not self-righteous. And i know what your all gonna do next, your gonna do exactly what your hero, the Undertaker, did, your gonna give up! Hell, by the looks at half of you, you already have. I mean, what kind of life is it that you live? What kind of existence do you have where you wake up in the morning and you have to pop a pill to help crawl out of bed? And then, then you ravage your body with pitchers of beer, and that's supposed to somehow heal your broken self-worth. And then you just make excuses about inhaling poison into your lungs just to calm your nerves. And then, at the end of your sad, pathetic, lonely day, your in need of another pill to make you forget everything. You need a pill to help you sleep. (The crowd boos as Punk mouths "you make me sick") You are all just a legion of inebriated zombies, waiting in line at the pharmacy with your hand out, begging and pleading for that newest anti-depressant that you think is going to put an artificial smile on your face. You scratch and you claw for scapegoats for all of your inadequacies, and believe me, you have a LOT of inadequacies. And don't tell me that you self medicate yourself to forget about it all, don't tell me you don't self medicate to hide from all your inadequacies, don't tell me you don't do it. Because if you do, well then your a liar too. Your lying to yourself, your lying to yourselves right now. Your lying to the person next to you, you go home and you lie to your family, and it's insulting because right now your lying to ME. And i can see right through all of you people and your lies, because i am not a liar. I am a man who means what he says and says what he means. What i am is a prophet, i am the choice of a new generation, i am a champion that everybody can finally be proud of, i am the first and only straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in history. And if your not straight-edge like me, well, that just means i'm better than you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 18, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Josh Homme photo
Jim Gaffigan photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
George Chapman photo

“Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams,
That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Hero and Leander: a poem (1600), begun by Christopher Marlowe, and finished by George Chapman. Sestiad III.

Robert Herrick photo
Joe Biden photo

“Good morning everyone. This past week we've seen the best and the worst of humanity. The heinous terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, in Iraq and Nigeria. They showed us once again the depths of the terrorist's depravity. And at the same time we saw the world come together in solidarity. Parisians opening their doors to anyone trapped in the street, taxi drivers turning off their meters to get people home safety, people lining up to donate blood. These simple human acts are a powerful reminder that we cannot be broken and in the face of terror we stand as one. In the wake of these terrible events, I understand the anxiety that many Americans feel. I really do. I don't dismiss the fear of a terrorist bomb going off. There's nothing President Obama and I take more seriously though, than keeping the American people safe. In the past few weeks though, we've heard an awful lot of people suggest that the best way to keep America safe is to prevent any Syrian refugee from gaining asylum in the United States. So let's set the record straight how it works for a refugee to get asylum. Refugees face the most rigorous screening of anyone who comes to the United States. First they are finger printed, then they undergo a thorough background check, then they are interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security. And after that the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Defense and the Department of State, they all have to sign off on access. And to address the specific terrorism concerns we are talking about now, we've instituted another layer of checks just for Syrian refugees. There is no possibility of being overwhelmed by a flood of refugees landing on our doorstep tomorrow. Right now, refugees wait 18 to 24 months while the screening process is completed. And unlike in Europe, refugees don't set foot in the United States until they are thoroughly vetted. Let's also remember who the vast majority of these refugees are: women, children, orphans, survivors of torture, people desperately in need medical help. To turn them away and say there is no way you can ever get here would play right into the terrorists' hands. We know what ISIL - we know what they hope to accomplish. They flat-out told us. Earlier this year, the top ISIL leader al-Baghdadi revealed the true goal of their attacks. Here's what he said: "Compel the crusaders to actively destroy the gray zone themselves. Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one and two choices. Either apostatize or emigrate to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution." So it's clear. It's clear what ISIL wants. They want to manufacture a clash between civilizations. They want frightened people to think in terms of "us versus them."They want us to turn our backs on Muslims victimized by terrorism. But this gang of thugs peddling a warped ideology, they will never prevail. The world is united in our resolve to end their evil. And the only thing ISIL can do is spread terror in hopes that we will in turn, turn on ourselves. We will betray our ideals and take actions, actions motivated by fear that will drive more recruits into the arms of ISIL. That's how they win. We win by prioritizing our security as we've been doing. Refusing to compromise our fundamental American values: freedom, openness, tolerance. That's who we are. That's how we win. May God continue to bless the United States of America and God bless our troops.”

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

Weekly presidential address http://www.c-span.org/video/?401096-1/weekly-presidential-address (21 November 2015).
2010s

Ervin László photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
Billy Joel photo
Peter Hitchens photo
Dhani Harrison photo
Pauline Hanson photo

“I’m not going to be silenced on yet another attack involving Islamic extremism - especially one occurring in the state I am representing in the Senate, Australians know what the problem is. It's time this government wakes up and starts looking after Australians' welfare before those from other countries.”

Pauline Hanson (1954) Australian politician

After the death of Mia Ayliffe-Chung at Shelly’s Backpackers in Home Hill. http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/25/09/51/hanson-seizes-on-hostel-tragedy (August 25, 2016)

Sarah Dessen photo
John Ashcroft photo
Derren Brown photo
River Phoenix photo

“Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee,
That she in peace may wake and pity me.”

Thomas Campion (1567–1620) English composer, poet and physician

Sleep, Angry Beauty

William S. Burroughs photo

“If we can’t wake up to the fact that deep down inside we are good, then we deserve to remain asleep dreaming we are evil.”

Lon Milo DuQuette (1948) American occult writer

Source: The Key to Solomon's Key (2006), Chapter 13

John Von Neumann photo

“You wake me up early in the morning to tell me that I'm right? Please wait until I'm wrong.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

As quoted by Jacob Bronowski in The Ascent of Man TV series

Pierce Brown photo
Annie Dillard photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo
Richard Bertrand Spencer photo
Douglas Coupland photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Bob Dylan photo

“When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), When You Gonna Wake Up

Mark Wahlberg photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Gertrude Stein photo
Ridley Pearson photo
Antonio Negri photo
Haruo Nakajima photo
Northrop Frye photo

“Finnegans Wake is a kind of hypnagogic structure, words reverberating on themselves without pointing to objects…This may be the hallucinatory verbal world within which God speaks.”

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

1:399
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

Tenzin Gyatso photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo

“The question was put to him, what hope is; and his answer was, "The dream of a waking man."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

Joseph Strutt photo
Joe Biden photo
Fyodor Tyutchev photo
Luís de Camões photo

“That sad and joyful dawn,
light full of pity and grief,
while the world wakes in loneliness
I'll praise it and remember it.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Aquela triste e leda madrugada,
Cheia toda de mágoa e de piedade,
Enquanto houver no mundo saudade,
Quero que seja sempre celebrada.
tr. David Wevill
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Aquela triste e leda madrugada

Jane Roberts photo
Dennis Miller photo

“The current tax code is harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading Finnegans Wake in a wind tunnel.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

Ranting Again

Michelle Obama photo

“I wake up in a house that was built by slaves.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Remarks by the First Lady at City College of New York Commencement https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/03/remarks-first-lady-city-college-new-york-commencement (3 June 2016); quoted in "Michelle Obama: Every Day, 'I Wake Up in a House That Was Built by Slaves'" http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/04/michelle-obama-every-day-i-wake-up-in-house-built-slaves/ by Jeremy Hudson, Breitbart (4 June 2016)
2010s

Kate Bush photo
Robert Fisk photo
Madalyn Murray O'Hair photo
Nakayama Miki photo
Will Smith photo

“Even Hitler didn't wake up going, "let me do the most evil thing I can do today." I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was "good." Stuff like that just needs reprogramming. … I wake up every day full of hope, positive that every day is going to be better than yesterday. And I'm looking to infect people with my positivity. I think I can start an epidemic.”

Will Smith (1968) American actor, film producer and rapper

As quoted in "Will Smith : My Work Ethic Will Make Me A Legend" by Siobhan Synnot in Daily Record (22 December 2007) http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/celebrity-interviews/2007/12/22/will-smith-my-work-ethic-will-make-me-a-legend-86908-20262460/
This was reported in various new stories http://www.volokh.com/posts/chain_1198541498.shtml as if Smith had declared that "Adolf Hitler was essentially a good person."
Smith responded to such misinterpretations in further statements:
It is an awful and disgusting lie. It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. … Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous, vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet.
"Will Smith Explains Hitler Quote" by Karen Salkin in People (26 December 2007) http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20168278,00.html; Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League accepting Smith's clarifications stated: "If anything, this episode serves as a reminder of the power of words, and how words can be twisted by those with hate and bigotry in their hearts to suit their own world view."

Richard Wilbur photo

“The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World

Sophie B. Hawkins photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Walter Savage Landor photo
Alan Moore photo

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

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

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Charles Krauthammer photo

“Remember how Democrats were complaining that Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare, it was somehow unpatriotic, because it was an attack on the law of the land. This law of the land doesn’t even exist. It exists in Obama’s head. It’s whatever he thinks. He wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is gonna be.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Fox News Special Report, February 12, 2014 : panel discussion http://www.mediaite.com/tv/krauthammer-obama-now-just-%e2%80%98decides-what-the-law-is-going-to-be%e2%80%99-every-morning/ ; video clip at mediaite.com.
2010s, 2014

Emma Lazarus photo

“Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains, —
The exiles by the streams of Babylon.”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

Ernst Bloch photo
Kathy Griffin photo

“Straight guys, this is your section, wake up (clap clap).”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Whores on Crutches (2010)

Billy Collins photo
Nastassja Kinski photo
Z-Ro photo

“I wake up early in the evenin round five thirty or six my Nextel beepin from all the calls I missed.”

Z-Ro (1977) American rapperdoj

One Two.
Song lyrics, Cocaine (2009)

Elton John photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Jacoba van Heemskerck photo

“This evening the Anthroposophical Society invited me to give a lecture about modern art, on 13 March. They start to wake up here [in the Netherlands]… Please, tell me something, what I should emphasize, what you find most important. I shall also read something from 'The Spiritual in Art' by Kandinsky… But we still have other views on the whole, isn't it. I don't always agree with Kandinsky, and often more with your views. So please write a little much… You know, for me it is always easier to paint my principles.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:) Heute abend bin ich durch den Anthroposophischen Verein eingeladen (worden) am 13. März einen Vortrag über moderne Kunst zu halten. Man fängt hier an zu erwachen.. .Bitte, sage mir einiges, was ich speziell betonen soll, was Du am wichtigsten findest. Ich werde dann auch aus 'Das Geistige in der Kunst' von Kandinsky.. ..etwas vorlesen. Aber wir haben doch in Ganzen noch andere Ansichten. Ich stimme nicht immer met Kandinsky überein, und oft mehr mit Deinen Ansichten. Also bitte schreibe ein bisschen viel.. .Du weisst, ich finde es immer einfacher, meine Prinzipien zu malen.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 28 Feb. 1916; from the 'Sturm'-Archive, Berlin
1910's

“A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless … someone's got to make a wake up call.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren Bennis, in Reinventing Leadership : Strategies to Empower the Organization (2005), by Warren G. Bennis and Robert Townsend, p. 91
2000s

Anastacia photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 29
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

Neil Diamond photo
Amir Taheri photo
Lewis Black photo
Francis Turner Palgrave photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (8:50 a.m. September 5, 2009)
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Haile Selassie photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo

“For thogh we slepe, or wake, or rome, or ryde,
Ay fleeth the tyme; it nyl no man abyde.”

The Clerk's Tale, l. 62-63
The Canterbury Tales

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“There is nobody to wake up eternal seekers.”

“Hegemonikon,” p. 27
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “Light Bugs”

Jerome K. Jerome photo

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

George Raymond Richard Martin photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“The leaders of the free world keep lowering their standards and authoritarians keep taking more territory. Eventually people wake up and ask why Putin murders in the UK or hacks in the US. Why wouldn’t he? You didn’t stop him before.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

As quoted in "Is Putin Popular?" https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/is-putin-popular-c/ (2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National Review
2010s

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Douglas MacArthur photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Such as the lute, touch'd by no hand
Save by an angel's, wakes and weeps,
Such is the sound that now to land
From the charmed water sweeps.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Haunted Lake
The Golden Violet (1827)

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Brené Brown photo
Ono no Komachi photo

“You do not come
On this moonless night.
I wake wanting you.
My breasts heave and blaze.
My heart burns up.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese (1976), p. 34

George William Russell photo

“Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul,
And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing. For Hindu households, the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family, coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

‘Harijan’, English weekly, Poona, founded by M.K. Gandhi, dated May 11, 1935
1930s

Samuel Johnson photo