Quotes about want
page 20

“Once we begin to want, we fall under the jurisdiction of the Devil.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“There are some simple maxims […] which I think might be commanded to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"How I Write", The Writer, September 1954
1950s

Thinking

“At first, being a female role model really terrified me. But it hasn't turned out to be an awful burden. I get a lot of letters from women who tell me that, after watching Xena, they have bought the Harley-Davidson they always wanted or left an abusive relationship.”

Lucy Lawless (1968) New Zealand actress

Robin Eggar (July 27, 1997) "Is it a bird? - Interview", The Sunday Times, p. Style 8.

Women

“I'm a man who is concerned with reality. I have to see everything. I have to plumb the depths of life. And so I go to war. That's why I volunteered [in the German army]. And when I tell people that nowadays, they say, "Good grief, so Dix was an out-and-out militarist! How does that fit together? He painted a war picture that was so frightful, so horrific, and now he says he was a militarist?" Yes, that's just it! What I said was: "If you want to be a hero, you have to see this whole mess and still say yes to it.”

Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker

Quote from Otto Dix, 1891-1969, p. 280; as cited in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 80

Life, War, People, Reality

“So is this the girl, you want me to be
I surrender myself, I'll never be free
One step from the edge, is all that I'll be
Waiting for you
Like a painkiller”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

"Painkillr"
Song lyrics, Other songs

Girl, Waiting

“Over the last fifteen months we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in fifty…seven states… I think one left to go. One left to go — Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to, even though I really wanted to visit — but my staff would not justify it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

A gaffe during a campaign address, where he had obviously meant to say forty-seven in reference to the 47 of the 48 contiguous US states he had visited. (9 May 2008) Official transcript of address http://www.barackobama.com/2008/05/09/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_63.php - video of actual delivery of the introduction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws 2008

Travel, Thinking

“I have always advocated that a woman had as much sense as a man, or she would not have been called to be his help-meet and companion. A question: What man wants to spend his days with a woman fool? I think she is in as much danger of spending her days with a fool as he is. I opened wide the doors of my first school for ladies. Another and a much greater reason I will offer and emphasize. Why not elevate our sister’s mentality, qualify her to fill all places of trust and honor, place her hand and head with the skilled arts. I know no reason she should not study anatomy, physiology, chemistry and all the machinery and laws of life… I will say by way of encouragement that all ladies who have graduated from this school and gone out in the world, have done well financially, and are made the guests of the best society in the land. They are well received and honored as ladies, and well paid for their skill. Places are open and ready for all that have a diploma from this school. And for the first time I will say, come on and qualify yourselves to take your places of usefulness. Do your part well, and a feast awaits you.”

Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917) Founder of Osteopathic Medicine

Still, A. T., Dr. A.T. Still's Department, Journal of Osteopathy, p. 413-414. https://www.atsu.edu/museum/subscription/pdfs/JournalofOsteopathyVol4No91898February.pdf/ Note: The first ASO class had 5 women members..

Life, World, School, Law

“It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 67
It All Adds Up (1994)

People, Age, Imagination, Time

“The forces of division have begun to raise their ugly head again … It reminds me: We've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. A lot of pent-up anger and mistrust and bitterness. This country wants to move beyond these kinds of things.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

"Obama asks country to come together right now" in The Boston Globe (16 March 2008) http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/16/obama_asks_country_to_come_together_right_now/ 2008

History, Anger, Country

“At that time they said I was crazy because I wanted to make a movie that was 14 or 16 hours. But now people do it. There are three—"Hobbit 1," "Hobbit 2," "Hobbit 3." Everything I wanted to do is possible to do today.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

People, Time

“Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of [our] population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend upon it, this government cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual. At such a time, and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric which for the last half century has been the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom throughout the world.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Men, Friendship, Pleasure, World

“I had heated conflicts with Soumaya during every week that I was at father’s house. All I wanted to do was play WoW, and Soumaya strictly limited my playtime. Because my new room was just across from hers, she knew what I was doing at every single second. She was breathing down my neck the whole time. She kept making me do chores around the house. I despised doing work around the house, especially since we had a nanny who was supposed to do it. If I made a scene about doing the work, she took away my laptop for a day or two. This was the most horrible thing she could do to me, to take away my only source of joy left in the world. She sometimes did it even when father was at home, and father didn’t lift a finger to stop her.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

World, Home, Time, Joy

“No talent is required to reproduce. Nature has done a tremendous job in creating this extraordinary piece — the body. The body does not want to learn anything from culture. It doesn't want to know anything from us. We are always interested in telling this body how to function. All our experiences, spiritual or otherwise, are the basic cause of our suffering. The body is not interested in your bliss or your ecstasies. It is not interested in your pleasure. It is not in interested in anything that you are interested in. And that is the battle that is going on all the time. But there seems to be no way out.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 4: You Invent Your Reality

Pleasure, Way, Nature, Suffering

“What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“So we are alone in our blood and bones and our thoughts. It seems we are separate if we want to feel that way. And yet we can look out.”

Eli Siegel (1902–1978) Latvian-American poet, philosopher

Self and World (1957)

Way, Feeling

“I want to proclaim a truth that would forever exile me from among the living. I know only the conditions but not the words that would allow me to formulate it.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Truth

“It was that pathetic feeling of not having a hot girlfriend on my arm while some other boys in the theatre did. What I truly wanted… what I truly NEEDED, was a girlfriend. I needed a girl’s love. I needed to feel worthy as a male. For so long I have felt worthless, and it’s all girls’ fault. No girl wanted to be my girlfriend.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Inceldom

Love, Feeling, Girl, Boy

“My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration – that's on the ballot right now! And there is one candidate who will advance those things. And there's another candidate whose defining principle, the central theme of his candidacy is opposition to all that we've done. There's no such thing as a vote that doesn't matter. It all matters. And after we have achieved historic turnout in 2008 and 2012, especially in the African-American community, I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by the President at Congressional Black Caucus Foundation 46th Annual Phoenix Awards Dinner https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/18/remarks-president-congressional-black-caucus-foundation-46th-annual (18 September 2016) 2016

School, Justice, Democracy, Communication

“He is so vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a Parliamentary constitution is not favorable to such ambitions; things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Lord John Manners, referring to the tactics of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel (17 December 1846), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (Vol. 2) (1913), p. 337-338.

History, Question, Personality

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life, World, Penalty, Way

“If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.”

Giannina Braschi book Yo-Yo Boing!

Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)

Love, Pain

“During my next visit with you, fellow-believers,” he said, “I shall tell you a parable about people who do things that they think God Almighty wants done. In the meanwhile, you would do well, for background on this parable, to read everything that you can lay your hands on about the Spanish Inquisition.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 7 “Victory” (p. 181)

God, People, Thinking, Reading

“We cannot think any true thought unless we want the true. Thinking is itself an aspect of practice.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 45

Thinking

“The last thing we want is a war in this country, but it is the inevitable outcome for the way the country is going. Now, the British people are not going to sit back and take much more.”

Tommy Robinson (1982) English right-wing activist

CBN News interview

War, People, Way, Country

“"Some people are desperately looking for scapegoats, they just don't want to see the truth!" (Jon commenting on the parents that blame music for the violence.)”

Jonathan Davis (1971) Heavy metal singer, frontman for Korn

People, Truth, Music, Parent

“And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. 'Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

Love, People, Age, Help

“At first I thought it was infatuation
But woo, it's lasted so long.
Now I find myself wanting
To marry you and take you home.
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.You, you, you, you send me
I know you send me
I know you send me
Honest you do.”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

You Send Me
Song lyrics, Sam Cooke (1957)

Home

“If we wanted to establish the reality of a social system as a complex of mutually dependent elements, why not begin by studying a system small enough so that we could, so to speak, see all the way around it, small enough so that all the relevant observations could be made in detail and at first hand?”

George C. Homans (1910–1989) American sociologist

The Human group, 1950

Way, Reality, Study, Dependency

“We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Wir haben uns über unser Dasein vor uns selbst zu verantworten; folglich wollen wir auch die wirklichen Steuermänner dieses Daseins abgeben und nicht zulassen, daß unsre Existenz einer gedankenlosen Zufälligkeit gleiche.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Chance

“The greatest want of the world is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Education, p. 57, c 1903, 1952, The Ellen G. White Publications; Pacific Press Publishing Association.

Men, World, Fear, Soul

“Don't talk to me about the world needing cheerful stuff! What the person out of Belsen — physical or psychological — wants is nobody saying the birdies still go tweet-tweet, but the full knowledge that somebody else has been there and knows the worst, just what it is like.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Letter to Aurelia Plath (August 21, 1962)
Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963 (1976)

World, Knowledge, Personality

“The things that always seem to work are the things that any magician can duplicate. Randi's quite right to point that out. But that's not because I'm doing a conjuring trick. You'd think that whatever causes these things to happen doesn't want them to be proved.”

Uri Geller (1946) Israeli illusionist

Colin Wilson, The Geller Phenomenon (1976), page 120.

Thinking

“The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they're property.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Appearance on The Howard Stern Show (1987).

People

“Excellency, please sign. I hate to say it, but my job is not the easiest one. Prague, your capital- I should be terribly sorry if I were compelled to destroy this beautiful city. But I would have to do it, to make the English and French understand that my air force can do all it claims to do. Because they still don't want to believe this is so, and I should like an opportunity of giving them proof.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

Said by Goering to the President of Czechoslovakia Emile Hácha on March 15, 1939, when Hácha, tired and under heavy pressure from Hitler to sign a document effectively handing his country over to Germany, nonetheless tried to resist signing. Hácha eventually gave up, and the combined pressure that Hitler and Goering had put on him caused Hácha to have a heart attack at 4:00 that morning. As quoted in On Borrowed Time: How World War II Began (1969) by Leonard Mosley, p. 167.

Hate, Beauty, Understanding

“I want you to have this,
all the beauty in my eyes,
and the grace of my mouth,
all the splendor of my strength,
all the wonder of the musk parts of my body,
for are we not talking about real love, real love?”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

Meera Bai, in [ http://books.google.co.in/books?id=fpcvv5pGKWMC&pg=PA250 Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West], p. 250

Love, Beauty, Parting

“Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Thesis 17
Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517)

God, Nature

“I don't know what to say since I don't know what is happening [in Albania]. I can say only one thing. My Albanian people are always in my heart. I pray very much to our Lord that His peace may come to our hearts, in our families and in all the world. I pray for Albania, that the Lord may help its leaders to see clearly because if they want to live in peace, they should love one another.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

As quoted in Louis Zanga "Mother Teresa's visit to Albania", Radio Free Europe Research, (23 August 1989)
1980s

Love, People, World, Family

“And it's the same across the nation
Black and white discrimination
Yellin' "You can't understand me!"
'N all that other jazz they hand me
In the papers and TV and
All that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don't appeal to him
(No matter if it's black or white)
Because he's out for blood tonight.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Trouble Every Day"
Freak Out! (1966)

Stupidity, Color, Understanding, Time

“I don't want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Statement by the President on the Situation in Paris https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/13/statement-president-situation-paris (November 13, 2015) 2015

“Want keeps pace with dignity. Destitute of the lawful means of supporting his rank, his dignity presents a motive for malversation, and his power furnishes the means.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

The Rationale of Reward (1811) http://books.google.com/books?id=W2lYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA246&dq=malversation&hl=en&ei=TQlHTKuqHYfJnAespJjOBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=28&ved=0CKsBEOgBMBs4ZA#v=onepage&q=malversation&f=false

Law, Motivation, Support

“I want to do everything in the world that can be done.”

Fanny Kemble (1809–1893) English actress and writer

Journal of a Residence in America, entry for September 11, 1832 (1835).

World

“You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don't want to be like "As Confucius say," but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens man that people are different.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)

People, Family, Thinking

“What would the Senate do with me, an inexperienced legislator who lacks the faculty of self-deception, essential requisite for anyone wanting to guide others.”

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa book The Leopard

Che cosa se ne farebbe il Senato di me, di un legislatore inesperto cui manca la facoltà d'ingannare sé stesso, questo requisito essenziale per chi voglia guidare gli altri?
Page 148
Il Gattopardo (1958)

“This is what I want, a poor Church for the poor.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

First audience at the Vatican, as quoted in Pope Francis describes wish for 'poor church for the poor' http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/16/17336851-pope-francis-describes-wish-for-poor-church-for-the-poor?lite, NBC News, (16 March 2013) 2010s, 2013

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XLIX
Following the Equator (1897)

Health, Way, Drink, Funny

“My English teacher wanted to flunk me in Junior High(Damn)…thanks a lot, next semester I'll be 35…I smacked him in his face with an eraser, chased him with a stapler and told him to change the grade on the paper.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"My Name Is" (Track 2).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Teachers, Change

“I have everything I want. I really can't think of any ambitions or things to strive for. I don't want to leave the house, I'm happy at home, I really am. I am.”

Lana Del Rey (1985) American singer-songwriter

"PM's favourite singer Lana Del Rey ignores the abuse", Evening Standard (24 January 2012), p. 13

Happiness, Home, Thinking, Housing

“If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

Come Follow To You, Vol. 2, Chapter 4; in Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic (2000), Part 2.

Idea

“I will not change my opinion, dear people, it is 5 minutes before twelve. Not just here in Holland. but in the whole of Europe. And is that what you want? I take my stand for this country, that which has been build up in the last five or six centuries. Damn it, we have a fifth column… Okay, let me tell you now straight the way it is! A fifth column of people who want to destroy this country! I will not go for that, and I say, "you can stay here, but you must adapt." I must hear "Allah is great", that I am a "dirty pig"… you are a "Christian dog". That is what they say, and you think that is okay… And I have so far been very reserved. I have never repeated that… but you accept being walked over, and I will not let that happen anymore. And that's where I get all those seats from (in the polls). Because this country is fed up! … C'est ça! That is what I stand for. And if I must express that otherwise, well, fine… but it is about your children, your grandchildren. For what else is this about? Must I explain more here? I can not do it any other way, and will not do it any other way. Then I would rather be finished off. Okay, fine… but the problem sir, will remain. That will remain. People have had more than enough of it. Damn it, in my city, Moroccan boys, Turkish boys… who do not rob the Turks, the Moroccans, but rob you and me and little old ladies. And the police? What they do? Damn it… nothing. They tell you: "If you say that, you discriminate". And that is what I express from the Dutch people. And I stand for it, I stand for it. Is that not allowed? Okay, I respect that. C'est ça”

Pim Fortuyn (1948–2002) Dutch politician

That’s all Nederland 2 documentary "The Night of Fortuyn" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgM9JozWOf0

Children, People, Dogs, Way

“I think it’s a real danger, as an actor, when you try to make some statement through your career about what the business should be doing or ultimately what your image should be or how you want to be perceived. I look at every project that comes along and say, “Is this something I can sink my teeth into and can do a good job on?” That’s really how I choose roles.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Business, Thinking

“It is beautiful here [in Etretat, Normandy], my friend; every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting.... I want to fight, scratch it off, start again, because I start to see and understand. I seems to me as if I can see nature and I can catch it all.... it is by observation and reflection that I discover how. That is what we are working on, continuously..”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote of Monet, 1864 in a letter to his friend Frédéric Bazille; as cited in Monet's landschappen Vivian Rusell; Icob, Alphen aan de Rijn, The Netherlands 2010, p. 12
1850 - 1870

Beauty, Understanding, Nature, Fight

“Something that's everything lacks limitation… There are advantages to not being able to do things. If you had everything you wanted at every moment at your fingertips, then there's nothing. There's no story. It's like Superman being able to bounces hydrogen bombs off of him. The whole series died because he didn't have any flaws. There's no story without limitation.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“Obama: Now, I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books, but that doesn't mean I don't know very well the real pain and heartbreak that deportations cause. I share your concerns and I understand them. And I promise you, we are responding to your concerns and working every day to make sure we are enforcing flawed laws in the most humane and best possible way. Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. [Applause] And believe me, right now dealing with Congress —
Audience: Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can!
Obama: Believe me — believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. [Laughter] I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. [Laughter] But that's not how — that's not how our system works.
Audience member: Change it!
Obama: That’s not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written. So let’s be honest. I need a dance partner here — and the floor is empty.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks to the National Council of La Raza (25 July 2011) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/25/remarks-president-national-council-la-raza 2011

Pain, People, Books, Law

“Billy Budd: You didn't even hate him. I think that sometimes you hate yourself. I was thinking, sir, the nights are lonely. Perhaps I could talk with you between watches when you've nothing else to do.
Claggert: Lonely. What do you know of loneliness?
Billy Budd: Them's alone that want to be.
Claggert: Nights are long. Conversation helps pass the time.
Billy Budd: Can I talk to you again, then? It would mean a lot to me.
Claggert: Perhaps to me, too. [His expression suddenly sours] Oh, no. You would charm me too, huh? Get away.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

Billy Budd (1962)

Hate, Thinking, Time, Help

“The four laws of learning are: the first is demonstration of what you want. The second is the criticism of the demonstration. The third is the imitation of the correct model, and the fourth is repetition, over and over until it becomes habit where is you don’t think about it.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Interview on Charlie Rose https://archive.org/details/WHUT_20100614_130000_Charlie_Rose (2000)

Law, Thinking, Learning

“I feel that if I am busting my arse, if I am stretching at night, if I am working hard in the gym, if I am doing all of my extras out on the field, if I am the first one there and the last to leave or whatever, and if I am giving my all every game, then I deserve to be the man I want to be rather than the man other people want me to be.”

Sonny Bill Williams (1985) New Zealand rugby player and heavyweight boxer

Williams on the controversial nature of his flitting between football codes. Sonny Bill Williams regrets nothing http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/sonny-bill-williams-regrets-nothing-20131129-2yfvd.html, by Brad Walter, Sydney Morning Herald, dated 29 November 2013.

People, Feeling, Game, Night

“When a client says, It's hard to say, he usually knows what's really going on but doesn't want to talk about it…. I break through that reluctance by acting as if it wasn't there. 'Well, say it anyway. This is the place to say hard-to-say-things.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 65

“I've been 15 years in the nut ward, for trying to stop the trees from being cut down, from trying to rearrange the lifestyle of a bunch of people who don't want to change. But they're gonna change because a cold wind is blowing. You're gonna change or else there's going to be no life left on the planet Earth.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHq2aN9tYE by Penny Daniels (1989)

Life, People, Tree, Change

“The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.
I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen. Being able to sit at home in the parsonage and your books would be very famous and occasionally you would correspond with the Prince of Wales's secretary.
You know I didn't think they'd rake through my bins, I didn't expect to be photographed on the beach through long lenses. I never dreamt it would impact my daughter's life negatively, which at times it has.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

As quoted in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, on Newsnight, as quoted in 'Harry is a lot, lot, lot angrier in this book' in The Telegraph (20 June 2003) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3596993/Harry-is-a-lot-lot-lot-angrier-in-this-book.html) 2000s

Life, Books, Home, Imagination

“People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better. In madness, I thought I was the most important person in the world.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

As quoted in " A Brilliant Madness A Beautiful Madness http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/ (2002), PBS TV program; also cited in Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession (2013) by René J. Muller, p. 62 2000s

People, World, Imagination, Idea

“It's just natural, it's not a great disaster. People keep talking about it like it's The End of The Earth. It's only a rock group that split up, it's nothing important. You know, you have all the old records there if you want to reminisce.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Interview on Scene And Heard by David Wigg (25 October 1971)

People, Nature

“I've given you a world without Government interference. There is now no advertising campaign, no intercompany deal, no promotion, no action you can't take. You want to pay kids to get the swoosh tattooed on their foreheads? Who's going to stop you? You want to make computers that need repair after three months? Who's going to stop you? You want to reward consumers who complain about your competitors in the media? You want to pay them for recruiting their little brothers and sisters to your brand of cigarettes? You want the NRA to help you eliminate your competition? Then do it. Just do it.”

Max Barry book Jennifer Government

Source: Jennifer Government (2003), Chapter 58

World, Sister, Help, Tattoo

“[W]hat I want to focus on tonight [is the] state of our democracy. Understand, democracy does not require uniformity [but] democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity - the idea that for all our outward differences, we're all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)

Democracy, Idea, Understanding, Sense

“When I got back from the war in 1946 people didn't want the Mr. Smith kind of movie any more, and I refused to make war pictures.”

Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997) American film and stage actor

On how he started doing westerns, as quoted in "Innocent Revisited" in TIME magazine (29 June 1970) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878861,00.html

War, People

“I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Boisgeloup, winter 1934
Richard Friendenthal (1963, p. 256).
Quotes, 1930's, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

People, Winter

“An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Art, Communication

“I do not want anything over again. Not even a mother.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Otra vez mno quisiera nada. Ni una madre quisiera otra vez.
Voces (1943)

“External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty!”

Jules Verne book A Journey to the Center of the Earth

Les objets extérieurs ont une action réelle sur le cerveau. Qui s’enferme entre quatre murs finit par perdre la faculté d’associer les idées et les mots. Que de prisonniers cellulaires devenus imbéciles, sinon fous, par le défaut d’exercice des facultés pensantes.
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Ch. XXVI: The worst peril of all

Exercises, Idea, Thinking, Madness

“Behold great Whitman, whose licentious line
Delights the rake, and warms the souls of swine;
Whose fever'd fancy shuns the measur'd pace,
And copies Ovid's filth without his grace.
In his rough brain a genius might have grown,
Had he not sought to play the brute alone;
But void of shame, he let his wit run wild,
And liv'd and wrote as Adam's bestial child.
Averse to culture, strange to humankind,
He never knew the pleasures of the mind.
Scorning the pure, the delicate, the clean,
His joys were sordid, and his morals mean.
Thro' his gross thoughts a native vigour ran,
From which he deem'd himself the perfect man:
But want of decency his rank decreas'd,
And sunk him to the level of the beast.
Would that his Muse had dy'd before her birth,
Nor spread such foul corruption o'er the earth.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Orignially written as part of an "Essay on Modern Poets" this was published as a "Fragment on Whitman” (c. 1912) in The Ancient Track (2001) edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 192
Non-Fiction

Pleasure, Soul, Birth, Swine

“My life was not useless; I gave important truths to the world, and it was only for want of understanding that they were disregarded. I have been ahead of my time.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Deathbed statement (November 1858), in response to a church minister who asked if he regretted wasting his life on fruitless projects; as quoted in Harold Hill : A People's History http://www.haroldhill.org/section_two/section_two_page_one.htm (2004).

Life, Truth, World, Understanding

“Hello, I'm Boy George, and you are watching RBTV. Come out of the closet, all you students - we want you!”

Boy George (1961) English musician

RBTV (Rainier Beach High School TeleVision in Seattle), 1996 ( youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyUMz-drEaU)

Boy

“It is true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthiest Americans and go back to the rate that they paid under Bill Clinton. John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets, conveniently, is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn't in good conscience support tax cuts where the benefit went to the wealthy at the expense of middle class Americans who most need the tax relief. That's his quote. Well, he was right then, and I am right now.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Comments at a campaign rally in Tampa; Florida (20 October 2008) http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2008/10/20/394027.html 2008

Quotes, Support, Forgetting

“If you want to sell your vote, go ahead; it's a free country. But be sure you get something for it… You can't get both justice and the two dollars.”

Luis Muñoz Marín (1898–1980) American politician

Quoted by TIME Magazine on March 31, 1941 when commenting on Puerto Rican jíbaros accepting $2 bribes for their votes. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765338-1,00.html

Justice, Country

“Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements… and decomposed doubtless, by electricity, which will then have become a powerful and manageable force, for all great discoveries, by some inexplicable law, appear to agree and become complete at the same time. Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Some day the coalrooms of steamers and the tenders of locomotives will, instead of coal, be stored with these two condensed gases, which will burn in the furnaces with enormous calorific power. There is, therefore, nothing to fear. As long as the earth is inhabited it will supply the wants of its inhabitants, and there will be no want of either light or heat as long as the productions of the vegetable, mineral or animal kingdoms do not fail us. I believe, then, that when the deposits of coal are exhausted we shall heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the future!”

Jules Verne book The Mysterious Island

Part II, ch. XI
The Mysterious Island (1874)

Fear, Law, Light, Water

“A minimum of unconsciousness is necessary if one wants to stay inside history. To act is one thing; to know one is acting is another. When lucidity invests the action, insinuates itself into it, action is undone, and with it, prejudice, whose function consists, precisely, in subordinating, in enslaving consciousness to action. The man who unmasks his fictions renounces his own resources and, in a sense, himself. Consequently, he will accept other fictions which will deny him, since they will not have cropped up from his own depths. No man concerned with his equilibrium may exceed a certain degree of lucidity and analysis.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The Temptation to Exist (1956)

History, Sense

“The little boy I watched throwing pebbles into the empty fountain […] You could tell that he had too much wisdom for his age. Probably he believed that he wasn't made for this world. I wanted to say to him: If not you, who?”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 351

Wisdom, Age, World, Boy

“This grasping of the whole is obviously the aim of science as well, but it is a goal that necessarily lies very far off because science, whenever possible, proceeds experimentally and in all cases statistically. Experiment, however, consists in asking a definite question which excludes as far as possible anything disturbing and irrelevant. It makes conditions, imposes them on Nature, and in this way forces her to give an answer to a question devised by man. She is prevented from answering out of the fullness of her possibilities since these possibilities are restricted as far as practible. For this purpose there is created in the laboratory a situation which is artificially restricted to the question which compels Nature to give an unequivocal answer. The workings of Nature in her unrestricted wholeness are completely excluded. If we want to know what these workings are, we need a method of inquiry which imposes the fewest possible conditions, or if possible no conditions at all, and then leave Nature to answer out of her fullness.”

C.G. Jung book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Source: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 35

Way, Question, Nature, Science

“And yet, today the harbour is silted up, most of the city lies buried beneath sand dunes and the land has become a desert. As the population had grown and more people wanted more fields, so more of the forest that once stood around the city was cut down, until eventually it was all gone. With no roots to hold the soil, and no attempt to conserve it, it was carried away by the wind and the rain.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

49 min 40 sec
The First Eden (1987)

People

“Dr. King understood that peace without justice was no peace at all; that aligning our reality with our ideals often requires the speaking of uncomfortable truths and the creative tension of non-violent protest. But he also understood that to bring about true and lasting change, there must be the possibility of reconciliation; that any social movement has to channel this tension through the spirit of love and mutuality. If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company’s union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other’s love for this country -- (applause) -- with the knowledge that in this democracy, government is no distant object but is rather an expression of our common commitments to one another. He would call on us to assume the best in each other rather than the worst, and challenge one another in ways that ultimately heal rather than wound.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Remarks at a Dedication Ceremony for the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial (October 2011)

Love, Truth, Peace, Justice

“I'm a Republican, I'm a conservative, I'm in first place, I want to run as a Republican and I think I'll get the nomination… [Hillary Clinton] is easily the worst Secretary of State in the history of the country. She's going to be beaten and I'm the one to beat her.”

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

2015-07-23
Donald Trump tours Mexican border with Texas
BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33645971
2010s, 2015

History, Thinking, Country

“If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world. We can then begin to make the real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and our actual behavior.”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: What Got You Here Won't Get You There, 2008, p. 125 (in 2010 edition)

World, Behavior, Thinking, Change

“We "conserve" nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods; we are not by any means "liberal"; we do not work for "progress"; we do not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in the market place sing of the future: their song about "equal rights," "a free society," "no more masters and no servants" has no allure for us.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

The Gay Science (1882)

Singing, Past, Future

“Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, don't care (I suppose) how many seeds of war are sown; but for the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more."”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Marquis de Chastellux (25 April 1788), published in The Writings of George Washington, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick, Vol. 29, p. 485
1780s

Men, War, Learning, Rage

“The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 14: Freedom Versus Authority in Education

Children

“I would not want to be a politician… Let me tell you this: If I was campaigning, and I go against my opponent and he started attacking my character, and I leap over the table and choke him unconscious, would that help my campaign?”

Chuck Norris (1940) American martial artist and actor

Chuck Norris' reply when asked if Walker the Texas Ranger could be president, in an interview by BarelyPolitical.com (5 December 2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bmzPkCVhj8

Help

“I don't fear death. But I don't like being dangled out there like a piece of meat on a fishing rod to it either. If I'm going to die, take me out now. Don't let me suffer. That's not exactly the way I wanted to go. I don't want to be in limbo, I don't want to know that I might die. The mights don't work with me. I'm too literal.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

"I don't fear death" http://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/mar/15/popandrock1, The Guardian.com, March 15, 2004. General Quotes

Death, Fear, Way, Fish

“We could say that the totality, life wants the sapling to become a tree, but the sapling doesn't see itself as separate from life and so wants nothing for itself. It is one with what life wants. That's why it isn't worried or stressed. And, if it has to die prematurely, it dies with ease…..”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

Life, Tree

“I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.”

Paul Desmond (1924–1977) American jazz musician

About his distinctive light sound
Unsourced

Thinking

“They were two and beautiful and wanted to be something else; love delayed itself to them in the tedium of the future, and regret of what would happen to be was already being the daughter of the love they hadn't had.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 288
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Eram dois e belos e desejavam ser outra coisa; o amor tardava-lhes no tédio do futuro, e a saudade do que haveria de ser vinha já sendo filha do amor que não tinham tido.

Love, Beauty, Future, Daughters