Quotes about well (10000 quotes, page 50)

“I suspect in Lenin's works there's everything, if you search well.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: magazine Magazyn Trybuny, 20 April 2002

Search

“The first is that he must be well-ordered from without in all virtues and unhindered within, just as empty of all outward works as though he were not working. For if he is busy within by any work of virtue, then he is assailed by images. As long as that is going on in him, he cannot contemplate.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Business

“The world of Debussy is a seductive oasis, and it is hard to leave it after spending many days immersed in its atmosphere. Playing Debussy-or any other composer with a strong and idiosyncratic personality-affects not only one's cast of mind but the physical disposition as well, the way the muscles work and the fingers come into contact with the ivories.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 2 Listening to the Sound of the Piano

World , Way , Strong , Personality

“I swear that I will invest all my efforts in the preservation of sovereignty and integrity of the territory of the Republic of Serbia, including Kosovo and Metohija as its integral part, as well as the realization of human and minority rights and freedoms, observation and defense of the Constitution and laws, preservation of peace and welfare of all Serbian citizens and that I will fulfill all my duties conscientiously and responsibly.”

Boris Tadić (1958) Serbian politician, President of Serbia 2004–2012

Tadić položio zakletvu, B92, 2008-02-15, 2008-02-16, Serbian http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2008&mm=02&dd=15&nav_category=11&nav_id=285045,.

Peace , Law , Effort , Freedom

“There is, then, no danger in the circumstances that anti-semitism will disappear, for it is the Jews themselves who add fuel to its flames and see that it is kept well stoked. Before the opposition to it can disappear, the malady itself must disappear. And from that point of view, you can rely on the Jews: as long as they survive, anti-semitism will never fade.”

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

13 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

“Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral…. Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U. S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, "Buy where you can buy the cheapest"…. Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: "Buy where you can pay the easiest."”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.
Speech in Boston, MA (Oct. 4, 1892) William McKinley Papers, Library of Congress.

People , World , Law , Nature

“Life was a storm to wander through.
I took the wrong way. Good and well,
At least my feet sought out not Hell!”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

Life , Way , Hell

“Our meeting with Admiral Leighton Smith, on the other hand, did not go well. He had been in charge of the NATO air strikes in August and September [1995], and this gave him enormous credibility, especially with the Bosnian Serbs. Smith was also the beneficiary of a skillful public relations effort that cast him as the savior of Bosnia. In a long profile, Newsweek had called him "a complex warrior and civilizer, a latter-day George C. Marshall." This was quite a journalistic stretch, given the fact that Smith considered the civilian aspects of the task beneath him and not his job - quite the opposite of what General Marshall stood for.
After a distinguished thirty-three-year Navy career, including almost three hundred combat missions in Vietnam, Smith was well qualified for his original post as commander of NATO's southern forces and Commander in Chief of all U. S. naval forces in Europe. But he was the wrong man for his additional assignment as IFOR commander, which was the result of two bureaucratic compromises, one with the French, the other with the American military. General Joulwan rightly wanted the sixty thousand IFOR soldiers to have as their commanding officer an Army general trained in the use of ground forces. But Paris insisted that if Joulwan named a separate Bosnia commander, it would have to be a Frenchman. This was politically impossible for the United States; thus, the Franh objections left only one way to preserve an American chain of command - to give the job to Admiral Smith, who joked that he was now known as "General" Smith. (…)
On the military goals of Dayton, he was fine; his plans for separating the forces along the line we had drawn in Dayton and protecting his forces were first-rate. But he was hostile to any suggestions that IFOR help implement any nonmilitary portion of the agreement. This, he said repeatedly, was not his job.
Based on Shalikashvili's statement at White House meetings, Christopher and I had assumed that the IFOR commander would use his authority to do substancially more than he was obligated to do. The meeting with Smith shattered that hope. Smith and his British deputy, General Michael Walker, made clear that they intended to take a minimalist approach to all aspects of implementation other than force protection. Smith signaled this in his first extensive public statement to the Bosnian people, during a live call-in program on Pale Television - an odd choice for his first local media appearance. During the program, he answered a question in a manner that dangerously narrowed his own authority. He later told Newsweek about it with a curious pride: "One of the questions I was asked was, "Admiral, is it true that IFOR is going to arrest Serbs in the Serb suburbs of Sarajevo?" I said, "Absolutely not, I don't have the authority to arrest anybody"."”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

This was an inaccurate way to describe IFOR's mandate. It was true IFOR was not supposed to make routine arrests of ordinary citizens. But IFOR had the authority to arrest indicted war criminals, and could also detain anyone who posed a threat to its forces. Knowing what the question meant, Smith had sent an unfortunate signal of reassurance to Karadzic - over his own network.
Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p.327-329

Hostility , War , People , Hope

“When people measure themselves not by their behavior, but by the status symbols they’re able to collect, then not only are they shallow, but they’re probably assholes as well.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 4, “The Value of Suffering” (p. 83)

People , Behavior

“When the times are ripe, the invocation of the masses is strident enough and the faith of those who know is keen enough, then always He has come and today will be no exception to this ancient rule or to this universal law. For decades, the reappearance of the Christ, the Avatar, has been anticipated by the faithful in both hemispheres—not only by the Christian faithful, but by those who look for Maitreya and for the Boddhisattva as well as those who expect the Imam Mahdi.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter I: The Doctrine of the Coming One (Western Teaching), The Doctrine of Avatars (Eastern Teaching)

Faith , Law , Universe , Time

“What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universities with innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and for the most part corrupt stupidities termed art — but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

Love , Life , Truth , Books

“Well now you say you've found another man who does things to you that I can't,
And that no matter what I do it's all over now between me and you girl.
But I can't believe what you say;
No I can't believe what you say 'cause babyI don't wanna fade away.
Oh I don't wanna fade away.
Tell me what can I do, what can I say
'Cause darlin' I don't wanna fade away.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Fade Away"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

Girl

“One of the big things about being a man, she'd noted, was that being good, doing the work, wasn't enough. It had to be generally acknowledged that here you were, damn well seeing to business.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 6

Business

“I hold that the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good. A positive good.”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

In 1837 http://stoprepublicans.blogspot.com/2008/06/democrats-held-these-words-to-be-self.html
1830s

Color , Evil

“I never worked with a dialogue coach before, but I'd hate it if an American did a British accent and didn't do it well. It would be insulting.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

Quoted in 1989 in The New York Times article "Tracy Ullman Makes A Face" http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/15/magazine/tracy-ullman-makes-a-face.html?pagewanted=all

Hate

“Mr. Rockefeller not only owns the Standard Oil supplies: he controls the railways, the banks, the shops…upon which his Trust depends. The Steel Corporation not only makes steel; it owns coal and iron fields, ore steamers, the Erie and Pittsburgh mineral railway, as well as the operatives in Homestead. We oppose the Trust, not as an organisation, but because it is controlled by individuals for their own ends…But the Trust points out the line of British advance. In this country, however, the introduction of the Trust should be marked by public ownership.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

The Zollverein and British Industry (1903), pp. 159-160
1900s

Dependency , Country

“Brexit was a chilling example of how truly intolerant and despicable the left in this country are. I know people whose own parents almost disowned them because they voted leave. I have probably received in the region of 300 death threats – mainly from Muslims who want to prove Islam is a “religion of peace” by killing me, as well as Black Lives Matter supporters. I now really enjoy the death threats because I post them all on social media and they allow me to illustrate how we are stupidly shaping society to cater for the most aggressive, hateful, bigots imaginable. The left denounces people like me as bigots for standing up for true liberal principles which made Western civilisation great in the first place.”

Paul Joseph Watson (1982) English YouTuber, radio host, writer, editor, and conspiracy theorist

"An interview with Paul Joseph Watson", The Tab (7 November 2016)

Death , Hate , People , Peace

“Well, what is a political film? A film about politicians? Or a film about issues — sexism, racism, the environment, nuclear policy? I decided on the broader definition. If I'd limited myself to films about politicians, it would have been a short list: How many characters in any mainstream American movie seem aware of the political process, or belong to a party?”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Ranking "the 20 best political films of the past two decades" in "The Big Picture: Roger Ebert" in MotherJones (May/June 1996) http://www.motherjones.com/arts/film/1996/05/ebert.html

“Conquer thyself, till thou hast done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

As quoted in The New Dictionary of Thoughts : A Cyclopedia of Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern, Alphabetically Arranged by Subjects (1957) by Tryon Edwards, p. 510

Art

“Since the belief in transmission of acquired adaptations arose from preconception rather than from evidence, it is worth observing that, rightly considered, the probability should surely be the other way. For the adaptations relate to every variety of exigency. To supply themselves with food, to find it, to seize and digest it, to protect themselves from predatory enemies whether by offence or defence, to counter-balance the changes of temperature, or pressure, to provide for mechanical strains, to obtain immunity from poison and from invading organisms, to bring the sexual elements into contact, to ensure the distribution of the type; all these and many more are accomplished by organisms in a thousand most diverse and alternative methods. Those are the things that are hard to imagine as produced by any concatenation of natural events; but the suggestions that organisms had had from the beginning innate in them a power of modifying themselves, their organs and their instincts so as to meet these multifarious requirements does not materially differ from the more overt appeals to supernatural intervention. The conception, originally introduced by Hering and independently by S. Butler, that adaptation is a consequence or product of accumulated memory was of late revived by Semon and has been received with some approval, especially by F. Darwin. I see nothing fantastic in the notion that memory may be unconsciously preserved with the same continuity that the protoplasmic basis of life possesses. That idea, though purely speculative and, as yet, incapable of proof or disproof contains nothing which our experience of matter or of life at all refutes. On the contrary, we probably do well to retain the suggestion as a clue that may some day be of service. But if adaptation is to be the product of these accumulated experiences, they must in some way be translated into terms of physiological and structural change, a process frankly inconceivable.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Problems In Genetics (1913), p. 190

Life , Food , Way , Imagination

“Now my humble fear is that this double training, in language as well as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young, especially when, at the age of three years old, they are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language — except for the purpose of repeating it in the presence of their Mothers and Nurses — and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at the present time as compared with the more robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 12. Of the Doctrine of our Priests

Truth , Age , Fear , Mathematics

“If, then, a phenomenon admits of a complete mechanical explanation, it will admit of an infinity of others, that will render an account equally well of all the particulars revealed by experiment.”

Henri Poincaré book Science and Hypothesis

Si donc un phénomène comporte une explication mécanique complète, il en comportera une infinité d’autres qui rendront également bien compte de toutes les particularités révélées par l’expérience.
Source: Science and Hypothesis (1901), Ch. XII: Optics and Electricity, as translated by George Bruce Halsted (1913)

“There is a regrettable interpretation of the cross that has, unfortunately, infected the minds of many Christians. This is the view that the bloody sacrifice of the Son on the cross was “satisfying” to the Father, and appeasement of a God infinitely angry at sinful humanity. In this reading, the crucified Jesus is like a child hurled into the fiery mouth of a pagan divinity in order to assuage its wrath. But what ultimately refutes this twisted theology is the well-known passage from John’s Gospel: “God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son, that all who believe in him might have eternal life.” John reveals that it is not out of anger or vengeance or in a desire for retribution that the Father sends the Son, but precisely out of love. God the Father is not some pathetic divinity whose bruised personal honor needs to be restored; rather God is a parent who burns with compassion for his children who have wandered into danger.”

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

Polishing the Diamonds https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/polishing-the-diamonds/5099/ (March 8, 2016)

Love , Life , God , Children

“President Robbins was so well adjusted to his environment that sometimes you could not tell which was the environment and which was President Robbins.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Ch. 1, p. 11

“I'm better suited to doing this because I enjoy dancing and performing, so I can incorporate a whole bunch of different elements of my personality into the performance component of Vitamin C and it turns out, without trying, there was a certain positive spirit and strong point of view [in the songs] that fairly well represented my personality. So it all came together quite nicely.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

About the Vitamin C project
Attributed

Strong , Dance , Personality

“An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station.”

Michael Winner (1935–2013) English film director, film producer, film editor and screenwriter

On turning down an OBE for his work in campaigning for the National Police Memorial http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5024336.stm.

“"Well", said Miss Marple. "Are you going to let her get away with it?" There was a pause, then Father brought down his fist with a crash on the table. "No", he roared — "No, by God I'm not!" Miss Marple nodded her head slowly and gravely. "May God have mercy on her soul," she said.”

Agatha Christie book At Bertram's Hotel

At Bertram's Hotel (1965)

God , Soul

“Aristocrats (among Hebrews and Greeks) often had harems that included women of common or even servile origin, as well as well-born aristocratic ladies. Normally, the successors would be chosen from the sons born by ladies; but on occasion those born by servile or common wives achieved the ascendency. In the latter case, tradition could dwell on the phenomenon as "worthy of saga."”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible

Women

“My dearest wish is the liberation of Namibia, for whose freedom I am quite prepared to give my life. I am conscious that I may never see the fulfilment of this hope within my own lifetime. I am more conscious for the many, many failures to achieve or accomplish what I might have achieved, as well as my failures to convince people, to win over support for our struggle within this country and elsewhere. I am deeply conscious of my failures to love, to show more patience when people have shown an inability to grasp our situation or have responded with stubborn aggression or anger. My constant reproach to myself is, if I had been more loving, perhaps Bishop X would have responded or Archbishop Y might have been more positive. But the very failing has its lessons to teach my brother and sister Namibians who will come after me and who will carry forward the struggle, learning from my mistakes. God can use my failures as well as my successes. This is a cause for great hope. "When I am weakest then am strongest!"”

Colin Winter (1928–1981) Bishop of Damaraland noted for opposing apartheid; exiled Bishop of Namibia; Irish-British Anglican bishop

God can turn my failures into triumphs: this is the mystery of the Cross.
The Breaking Process http://www.getcited.org/pub/103428837, London: SCM Press Ltd., 1981, p. 99. ISBN 0334001390

Love , Life , God , People

“I might be better able to help parents of dying children, but for quite a while I felt less able, too emotionally involved. And from that time on, I could rarely discuss the death of a child without tears welling up into my eyes.”

C. Everett Koop (1916–2013) American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator

Koop: The Memoirs of America's Family Doctor (1993), p. 126.

Death , Children , Parent , Tear

“The Prosecution holds me responsible for the concentration camps, for the destruction of Jewish life, for Einsatzgruppen and other things. All of this is neither in accord with the evidence nor with the truth. The accusers as well as the accused are exposed to the dangers of a summary proceeding. It is correct that I had to take over the Reich Security Main Office. There was no guilt in that in itself. Such offices exist in governments of other nations too. However, the task and activity assigned to me in 1943 consisted almost exclusively in the reorganization of the German political and military intelligence service, though not as Heydrich's successor. Almost a year after his death I had to accept this post under orders and as an officer at a time when suspicion fell on Admiral Canaris of having collaborated with the enemy for years. In a short time I ascertained the treason of Canaris and his accomplices to the most frightful extent.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

8/31/46. Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Nuremberg, Germany - 1947

Life , Death , Truth , Intelligence

“There are many other evils in our country which are growing, whereas the practice of slavery is fast diminishing, and threaten to bring punishment on our land more immediately than the oppression of the blacks. That sacred regard to truth in which you and I were educated, and which is certainly taught and enjoined from on high, seems to be vanishing from among us. A general relaxation of education and government, a general debauchery as well as dissipation, produced by pestilential philosophical principles of Epicurus, infinitely more than by shows and theatrical entertainments; these are, in my opinion, more serious and threatening evils than even the slavery of the blacks, hateful as that is. I might even add that I have been informed that the condition of the common sort of white people in some of the Southern States, particularly Virginia, is more oppressed, degraded, and miserable, than that of the negroes. These vices and these miseries deserve the serious and compassionate consideration of friends, as well as the slave trade and the degraded state of the blacks. I wish you success in your benevolent endeavors to relieve the distresses of our fellow creatures, and shall always be ready to cooperate with you as far as my means and opportunities can reasonably be expected to extend.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1800s, Letter to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley (1801)

Hate , People , Truth , Education

“One has to know how to swim just well enough to avoid having to save anyone else.”

Enrique Vila-Matas (1948) Spanish writer

Enrique Vila-Matas (2011) Never Any End to Paris, Translated by Anne McLean. p. 45
The narrator quoting his mother.

“If I could start my life all over again, I would be a professional football player. And you damn well better belive I'd be a Pittsburgh Steeler.”

Jack Lambert (1952) American football player

In his Hall of Fame induction speech. http://www.profootballhof.com/multimedia/inductions/2010/7/6/jack-lamberts-enshrinement-speech/

Life , Football

“In fact, there may be a day in the near future when you find yourself in a conversation about this book, and someone will ask you what the story is really about, beyond the rudimentary narrative of a cross-country death trip based on a magazine article. And it's very likely you will say, "well, the larger thesis is somewhat underdeveloped, but there is this point early in the story where he takes a woman to Ithaca for no real reason, and it initially seems innocuous, but - as you keep reading - you sort of see how this behaviour is a self-perpetuating problem that keeps reappearing over and over again." In all probability, you will also complain about the author's reliance on self-indulgent, postmodern self-awareness, which will prompt the person you're conversing with to criticize the influence of Dave Eggers on the memoir-writing genre. Then your cell phone will ring, and you will agree to meet someone for brunch.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Death , Books , Problem , Reading

“Bakunin: Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not — well, it's progress”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

The Coast of Utopia: Shipwreck (2002)

Idea

“One of the things that I learned in the war is that we're not the top species on the planet because we're nice. We are a very aggressive species; it is in us. People talk a lot about how well the military turns kids into killing machines, and I'll always argue that it's just finishing school. What we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit and rope in these aggressive tendencies, and we have to recognize them. I worry about a whole country that doesn't recognize them, because think of how many times we get ourselves into scrapes as a nation because we're always the 'good guys.”

Karl Marlantes (1944) Businessman, novelist

Sometimes, I think if we thought we weren't always the good guys, we might actually get into less wars.
The Vietnam War (2017), episode 5, documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

War , People , School , Guy

“A well-known joke - a fool who thought he was a grain of corn. After some time in a mental hospital he was cured; now he knew that he was not a grain, but a man. So they let him out; but soon after he came running back saying, 'I met a hen and I was afraid she would try to eat me.' The doctors tried to calm him down. 'What are you afraid of? You know you are not a grain, but a man.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

The fool answered: 'Yes of course I know that, but does the hen know?'
33
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Fools , Time

“As systematic inquiry into the natural facts was begun it was at once found that the accepted ideas of variation were unfounded. Variation was seen very frequently to be a definite and specific phenomenon, affecting different forms of life in different ways, but in all its diversity showing manifold and often obvious indications of regularity. This observation was not in its essence novel. Several examples of definite variation had been well known to Darwin and others, but many, especially Darwin himself in his later years, had nevertheless been disposed to depreciate the significance of such facts. They consequently then lapsed into general disparagement. Upon more careful inquiry the abundance of such phenomena proved to be far greater than was currently supposed, and a discussion of their nature brought into prominence a consideration of greater weight, namely that the differences by which these definite or discontinuous variations are constituted again and again approximate to and are comparable with the class of differences by which species are distinguished from each other.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Preface
Problems In Genetics (1913)

Life , Way , Idea , Nature

“Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world!”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

World , Time

“The subject of a science is never well circumscribed and there is little use sharpening its definition. However, nobody will deny that physics deals with nature and sociology with human society in some of their aspects. With logic, it is another matter. Logic is usually understood nowadays as a study of certain formal systems, though in former times there were philosophers who held that the subject matter of logic was the formal rules of human thought. In the latter sense it would be an empirical rather than a formal science, though its empirical subject matter would still be fundamentally different from that of psychology of thinking. One interpretation of logic does not exclude the other. Formal approaches are often easier than empirical ones, and for this reason one can understand why logic as a study of formal systems has till now made more progress than logic as a study of the formal rules of thought, even if restricted to scientific thought.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: Realistic models in probability (1968), p. 1

Understanding , Nature , Thinking , Sense

“Punk: Wow, everybody, it's John Cena. He comes out here every Monday night, he's excitable, he throws his hat at somebody, everybody loves it. I am so impressed at how you do that. You get all these people to believe you're that friendly, smiling, everyday man, when I know the truth. And the truth, John Cena, is you're thoughtless, you're heartless, and above all else, you are dishonest. I'm sure there's millions of people worldwide, including yourself, that would love to believe this is over a spilled diet soda, but John, this goes way beyond my spilled diet soda. Yeah. John, you were fired from the WWE. You were gone. You gave a very tear-inducing speech in the middle of the ring about how you finally get to see your mom and hang out with your little brother, and you said you were gonna go away. You were gonna be a man of your way, but what happened? You came back later that night, and then you came back the next week, and then you came back the next week, showing all of these people who aren't intelligent to see through your facade what I have known all along—that your word is absolutely worthless. And then there's TLC, you have the man beaten. Wade Barrett, a very tough individual, and you have him beat in a chairs match, but that's not good enough for you. You don't take the high ground, you can't walk off into the sunset with your victory; you drag the man off to the side of the stage and you drop fifteen steel chairs on him, and I wanna know exactly why you think that's acceptable behavior. I wanna know why you think it's okay to show up the next night on Raw and humiliate the poor guy…
Cena: That is balderdash! Fifteen steel chairs? That's insane. It was 23 steel chairs. And in case you forgot, Wade Barrett and the Nexus gave me about five thousand beat-downs, made me their personal slave, and ended my career.
Punk: You wanna talk about ended careers, you hypocrite? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You ended the career of my good friend Dave Batista. John! John, look at me when I'm talking to you. This is a reoccurring pattern with you. Once again, you have the man beaten—last man standing, he verbally submits, how humiliating, the match is won. But, no, you AA him off a car through the very steel ramp that I'm sitting on, which facilitated the end of his career. Now we'll talk about Vickie Guerrero. I'm surprised the lovely Vickie Guerrero doesn't up and quit based on all the abuse you heap on her. It's not just the physical things to the Wade Barretts and the Dave Batistas, but it's the name-calling, it's the mental abuse to somebody as gorgeous and beautiful as Vickie Guerrero.
Cena: "It's the this… it's the that." Okay, CM Punk is gonna play Mr. Fingerpointer. Well…1.—Dave Batista broke my neck; 2.—He showed up on Raw the next night and quit on his own terms. And C—I didn't just single out Vickie Guerrero. In case you haven't been watching for the past… eight years, I talk about everybody. Uh… Michael Cole. Michael Cole has an anonymous fetish with Justin Bieber and has the word "The Miz" man-scaped right below his belly button. Me! Look at me. I look like the crazy sex child of the Incredible Hulk and Grimace. And then there's you.
Punk: Yeah, and then there's me, who happens to not be laughing. I don't know if you noticed that. You're not funny.”

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

December 27, 2010
WWE Raw

Love , People , Truth , Smile

“As far as my work concerned, I am busy with a few small paintings, one is ordered and the other I have to 'adventure'. More and more I feel that I am short of so many studies, if I had the money, I didn't make any painting next year, I would only study [sketches]; but well, you have to make the best of a bad job, it will be hard enough to enable myself a living.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Wat mijn werk betreft zit ik aan enige kleine schilderijtjes, een is mij besteld en die andere moet ik avonturen. Ik voel hoe langer hoe langs hoe meer dat ik zooveel studie te kort kom, als ik geld had schilderde ik in het eerste jaar geen schilderij en studeer ik [schetsen], maar enfin je moet eens door een zure appel heenbijten, het zal mij moeite genoeg kosten om te kunnen leven.
Quote of Mauve, in a letter to Willem Maris, from Oosterbeek, 1864; as cited in Anton Mauve 1838 - 1888, exhibition catalog of Teylers Museum, Haarlem / Laren, Singer, ed. De Bodt en Plomp, 2009, p. 133
1860's

Money , Feeling , Business , Study

“He said that both views were one view and that while men may meet with death in strange and obscure places which they might well have avoided it was more correct to say that no matter how hidden or crooked the path to their destruction yet they would seek it out. He smiled. He spoke as one who seemed to understand that death was the condition of existence and life but an emanation thereof.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Life , Death , Men , Smile

“There's a cat in the window, of the house of my lover.
Well she sleeps there alone now, or perhaps with another.
Oh I try no to think about that, I try not to think at all!”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

Cats , Lovers , Thinking , Sleep

“When I said I was going to become a comedian, they all laughed. Well, they're not laughing now, are they?”

Bob Monkhouse (1928–2003) English entertainer

Second obituary on BBC news website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1958051.stm

“The Industrial Revolution was well under way and people were looking for some way to justify the cruelty that accompanied this revolution. (Child labor, sweat houses, etc. ) Darwin’s book was just what the world needed to justify the cruel ruthless tactics of the industrial revolution. Darwin had a theology degree. He became a deist, and later, very proudly an atheist. There are many stories of him repenting on his death bed, but there still is much confusion on the issue.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Death , People , Books , World

“Christine O'Donnell: But let me tell you something! They — homosexuals' special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can!
Alan Colmes: Well, what are they getting away with here, Christine? Tell me what you’re seeing…
Christine O'Donnell: They're getting away with nudity!
Fay: Oh, right.
Christine O'Donnell: They're getting away with nudity! They're getting away with lasciviousness! They're getting away with perversion!
Fay: Oh, Christine…
Christine O'Donnell: They're getting away with blasphemy!”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

2000-06-26
Television series
Hannity & Colmes
Fox News
Christine O'Donnell: how can she be taken seriously? Rush says she's electable.
Pam
Spaulding
Pam's House Blend
2010-09-19
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/17374/christine-odonnell-how-can-she-be-taken-seriously-rush-says-shes-electable
2010-10-20
2010-09-15
Christine O'Donnell Does Not Like Gays.
Instaputz
http://instaputz.blogspot.com/2010/09/christine-odonnell-does-not-like-gays.html
2010-10-20
about 2000 New York City Gay Pride Parade
TV appearances

“What is wonderful about a university like LSE is that you not only receive teaching of very high quality, you also learn where to find the knowledge you are seeking. And you make unexpected discoveries; it was a Marxist professor who introduced me to the work of Cardinal Newman, a great master of English prose as well as theology.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

Part 1, 1919 - 1968 The Road to 24 Sussex Drive, p. 46
Memoirs (1993)

Knowledge , Learning , Universe

“Where the forms of civil, religious and political liberty still exist, they must be strengthened and given new power over the hearts as well as over the minds of men. Faith must not be lost, and courage must not be lacking. The call is for every civilized human being who believes in justice, in liberty and in public morals. The bell is ringing!”

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

Address The bell is ringing
Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Men , Faith , Justice , Courage

“I don't think so. … Well, let's put it this way. This month, I don't think so. It's been a long couple of months.”

Frank Miller (1957) American writer, artist, film director

Response to the question "Is There A God?" by Stephen Thompson AVClub (9 October 2002) http://www.avclub.com/content/node/24569

Way , Thinking

“Hamilcar also told Hannibal about elephants and how you must always have plenty of these animals to scare the enemy. He attributed much of his own success to elephants and believed they would have won the First Punic War for him if things hadn't gone slightly haywire; for the war had turned into a naval affair. But even when the fighting was on land, the Romans did not scare nearly so well as expected. The Romans had learned about elephants while fighting Pyrrhus, whose elephants defeated him in 275 B. C., and even before that, in Alexander's time, King Porus had been undone by his own elephants. Thus, if history had taught any one thing up to that time, it was never to use elephants in war.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

War , History , Learning , Time

“Thank you, Donald, for that well-meant but rather pedestrian introduction. Regarding yourself, I quote from the third part of Shakespeare's Henry VI, Act Two, Scene One. Richard speaks, "Were thy heart as hard as steel/ As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds/ I come to pierce it, or to give thee mine." To translate into your own idiom, Donald; you're a yo-yo. Now I direct my remarks to Dean Martin, who is being honored here tonight… for reasons that completely elude me. No, I'm not being fair to Dean because - this is true - in his way Dean, and I know him very well, has the soul of a poet. I'm told that in his most famous song Dean authored a lyric which is so romantic, so touching that it will be enjoyed by generations of lovers until the end of time. Let's share it together. [Opens a songsheet for Dean's "That's Amore" and reads in a monotone] "When the moon hits your eye/ Like a big pizza-pie/ That's amore" Now, that's what I call 'touching', Dean. It has all the romanticism of a Ty-D-Bol commercial. "When the world seems to shine/ Like you've had too much wine/ That's amore" What a profound thought. It could be inscribed forever on a cocktail napkin. Hey, there's more. "Tippy-tippy-tay/ Like a gay tarantella" Like a gay tarantella? Apparently, Dean has a 'side Dean' we know nothing about. "When the stars make you drool/ Just like a pasta fazool…. Scuzza me, but you see/ Back in old Napoli/ That's amore" No, Dean; that's infermo, Italian for "sickened". Now, lyrics like that - lyrics like that ought to be issued with a warning: a song like that is hazardous to your health. Ladies and gentlemen… [motions to Dean] you are looking at the end result!”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given at a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Viewable here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKR0i-51S4.

Health , World , Way , Quotes

“It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 66
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

World

“It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,—Necessity will make him submit,—but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;—that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Wisdom , God , World , Law

“Back when a hoe was a hoe.
Coke was a coke.
And crack's what you were doing.
When you were cracking jokes.
Back when a screw was a screw.
The wind was all that blew.
And when you said I'm down with that.
Well, it meant you had the flu.
I miss back when.
I miss back when.
I miss back when.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Back When
Song lyrics, Live Like You Were Dying (2004)

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

World , Business , Water , Personality

“Undershaft: My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act II
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Religion

“But they have not rejected the Budget; they have only referred it to the people. On what principle do they refer Bills to the people? I remember the election of 1900, when a most powerful member of the Tory Cabinet said that the Nonconformists could vote with absolute safety for the Government, because no question in which they were interested would be raised. In two years there was a Bill destroying the School Boards. There was a Bill which drove Nonconformists into the most passionate opposition. What did the House of Lords do? Did they refer it to the people? Oh no, there was a vast difference between protecting the ground landlords in towns and protecting the village Dissenter. After all, the village Dissenter is too low down in the social scale for such exalted patronage, so he was left to the mercy of a Tory House of Commons without any of this high and powerful protection. Well, the Dissenters, despised as they may be, once upon a time taught a lesson to the House of Lords, and ere another year has passed they will be able to say, "Here endeth the second lesson".”

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

Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 189.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People , School , Question , Passion

“If you give a man a hammer, he thinks he can solve all problems by pounding. Well, God gave men penises….”

Jacob M. Appel Arborophilia

Arborophilia (2005)

Men , God , Problem , Thinking

“In nations composed of both cultured and uncultured elements, the uncultured will govern because it is their habit to attack and resolve doubts with their fists in cases where the cultured have failed in the art of governing. The uncultured masses are lazy and timid in the realm of intelligence, and they want to be governed well. But if the government hurts them, they shake it off and govern themselves.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1881)

Art , Intelligence , Hurt

“So I bought a.44 magnum, it was solid steel cast.
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast.
'Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbin' the almighty peace.
Judge said "What you got in your defense son?"
"Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on."
I can see by your eyes friend you're just about gone.
Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on…
Fifty-seven channels and nothin'”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"57 Channels"
Song lyrics, Human Touch (1992)

Peace

“Well tonight I'm gonna live for today, so come along for the ride,
I hope I'm old before I die.”

Robbie Williams (1974) British singer and entertainer

Old Before I Die
Life Thru a Lens (1997)

Hope

“Dr. R. C. Majumdar has summed up the situation so far in the following words: “India south of the Vindhyas was under Hindu rule in the 13th century. Even in North India during the same century, there were powerful kingdoms not yet subjected to Muslim rule, or still fighting for their independence… Even in that part of India which acknowledged the Muslim rule, there was continual defiance and heroic resistance by large or small bands of Hindus in many quarters, so that successive Muslim rulers had to send well-equipped military expeditions, again and again, against the same region… As a matter of fact, the Muslim authority in Northern India, throughout the 13th century, was tantamount to a military occupation of a large number of important centres without any effective occupation, far less a systematic administration of the country at large.” …. The situation during the 14th and the 15th centuries has been summed up by Dr. R. C. Majumdar in the following words: “The Khalji empire rose and fell during the brief period of twenty years (A. D 1300-1320). The empire of Muhammed bin Tughlaq… broke up within a decade of his accession (A. D. 1325), and before another decade was over, the Turkish empire passed away for ever… Thus barring two every short-lived empires under the Khaljis and Muhammad bin Tughlaq… there was no Turkish empire in India. This state of things continued for nearly two centuries and a half till the Mughals established a stable and durable empire in the second half of the sixteenth century A. D.””

R. C. Majumdar (1888–1980) Indian historian

Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990231

Success , Fight , Parting , Country

“Apropos of the "The Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea which it embodies, and which justifies its painfulness. A motto which I wrote on it yesterday perhaps is a sufficient indication of that idea: —
"Give me no light, great heaven, but such as turns
To energy of human fellowship;
No powers save the growing heritage
That makes complete manhood."
But it will be well to put the story in harness with some other productions of mine, and not send it forth in its dismal loneliness. There are many things in it which I would willingly say over again, and I shall never put them in any other form. But we must wait a little. The question is not in the least one of money, but of care for the best effect of writing, which often depends on circumstances, much as pictures depend on light and juxtaposition.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Comments on The Lifted Veil with a motto for it used in the "Cabinet Edition" of her works (1878), in a letter to John Blackwood (28 February 1873), published in George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals (1885), Vol. 4

Money , Pain , Idea , Question

“It occurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chief qualification, I understand is that you must be born. Well, I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was all right on that score.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald's Rubaiyat"
Reginald (1904)

Birth , Understanding

“Well, Mondrian is absolute, and is pure, and those are real aspirations of our [American Abstract Expressionism art]. When I say 'pure', I don't mean 'clean'. I don't think Mondrian himself did; I knew him when he was here [New York] during the war. He went to an exhibition by the Surrealist, Tanguy, and was asked what he thought, and he said he would like Tanguy's pictures better if they were dirtier, that for him they were to clean…. I think he meant that when they were to 'clean', they were essentially lifeless, statuesque, unrevised. As for me, I must say, Mondrian's painting is intensely rhythmic, warm, passionate - restricted as the means ostensibly seem to me.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

first published in 'Metro', 1962; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 81
1960s, Interview with David Sylvester', (1960)

War , Art , Thinking , Passion

“The ancient Greek philosopher, Democritus, propounded an hypothesis of the constitution of matter, and gave the name of atoms to the ultimate unalterable parts of which he imagined all bodies to be constructed. In the 17th century, Gassendi revived this hypothesis, and attempted to develope it, while Newton used it with marked success in his reasonings on physical phenomena; but the first who formed a body of doctrine which would embrace all known facts in the constitution of matter, was Roger Joseph Boscovich, of Italy, who published at Vienna, in 1759, a most important and ingenious work, styled Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis ad unicam legem virium, in Natura existentium redacta. This is one of the most profound contributions ever made to science; filled with curious and important information, and is well worthy of the attentive perusal of the modern student. In more recent days, the theory of Boscovich has received further confirmation and extension in the researches of Dalton, Joule, Thomson, Faraday, Tyndall, and others.”

Alfred M. Mayer (1836–1897) American physicist

Alfred Marshall Mayer, Lecture-notes on Physics (1868) Part 1 https://books.google.com/books?id=hqsLAAAAYAAJ

Imagination , Science , Success , Parting

“Options allow a woman to tailor her role to her personality, but if a man expects to provide well, he expects to wear a suit, not to wear what suits him.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 183.

Personality

“So it was that the Catherines poured water and spooned gruel, while the Clares prayed for the intercession of the saints. The Catherines changed sheets. The Clares practiced mortification of the flesh. The Catherines employed antibiotics. The Clares made a public display of a kneecap of their patron saint.
It was soon widely know to which hospital one went to get well, and to which one went to die.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 9, “The Plague Kitchen” (p. 141)

Water , Change

“1. There is Nato intervention politically as well as military.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975), Letter to Barack Obama

“Then think I thus: "Sith such repair,
So long time war of valiant men,
Was all to win a lady fair,
Shall I not learn to suffer then?
And think my life well spent to be,
Serving a worthier wight than she?"”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"The Lover Comforteth Himself with the Worthiness of his Love", line 19

Life , Men , War , Thinking

“Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles? Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one of these men says as he begins his march, " The general has dealt hardly with me," but "He has judged well of me."”
Quare deus optimum quemque aut mala valetudine aut luctu aut aliis incommodis adficit? quia in castris quoque periculosa fortissimis imperantur: dux lectissimos mittit qui nocturnis hostes adgrediantur insidiis aut explorent iter aut praesidium loco deiciant. Nemo eorum qui exeunt dicit 'male de me imperator mervit', sed 'bene iudicavit'.

Seneca the Younger Moral Essays

De Providentia (On Providence), 4.8, translated by Aubrey Stewart
Moral Essays

Men , God , Hostility , Health

“The impregnability of his stonewall defense rested on his ability to reach the ball, and then throw it. Now he could move less well; now he was not coming up with the ball with that "perfect technique" Eddie Brannick had once admired, his body beautifully balanced, the ball directly in front of him. Now it was a movement full of desperate lunges. Fortunately he had his great arm, so even off-balance, he was throwing out runners, and each time he'd throw—though it had happened hundreds of prior times—the fans at the Polo Grounds, or elsewhere around the league, would gasp at the low blur that streaked across the diamond, dead on target. But he had more than a powerful arm. He had courage. And on he played, in pain and out.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On Travis "Stonewall" Jackson, from "Stonewall," in Greatest Giants of Them All (1967), p. 172
Sports-related

Pain , Courage , Time , Perfection

“Some things fail and others succeed. Well, then you get quite desperate, and you think: 'I am going to work and work and I'm not going to have any failures.' But then you find out that failures are inevitable; you can't even draw a straight line, you know that.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

as quoted in A House Divided: American Art Since 1955, Anne M. G. Wagner, Univ. of California Press 2012, p. 205 - note 8
1980 - 2000

Failure , Thinking , Drawing

“I call it to mind and delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time. We next to never know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,--for if we did, we should perhaps know better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes thought that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other. He who wrote, “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint agricolas,” might have written quite as truly, “O infortunatos nimium sua si mala norint”; and there are few of us who are not protected from the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done, what we are suffering, and what we truly are. Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 3

Pain , Way , Suffering , Appearance

““Petty tyrant a long time back. He built this place.”
“Trepp said it belonged to the Catholics.”
Kawahara shrugged. “Petty tyrant with delusions of religion. Catholics get on well with tyranny. It’s in the culture.””

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 25 (p. 321)

Religion , Time

“But it's deeper than that. We have given in to the politics of anger- the belief that riling up the base can make up for failed attempts to broaden the electorate. These are the spasms of a dying party. Anger and resentment and blaming groups of people for our problems might work politically in the short term, but it's a dangerous impulse in a pluralistic society, and we know from history that it's an impulse that, once acted upon, never ends well.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Source: Conscience of a Conservative (2017), p. 8

People , History , Problem , Anger

“Macaulay was the English historian. Adams had the greatest admiration for Macaulay, but he felt that any one who should even distantly imitate Macaulay would perish in self-contempt. One might as well imitate Shakespeare.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“As much as possible, the government should purchase brand new military hardware if it really wants to modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), which is widely regarded as one of the weakest military forces in Southeast Asia. If we are going to pour in billions of pesos to improve the AFP, we might as well give our soldiers the best modern and sophisticated equipment we can get.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Sun Star Manila http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2015/08/18/escudero-asks-govt-stop-buying-dilapidated-military-hardware-425294
2015

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Wisdom , People , Books , Age

“We are struggling with racism, but racism is also alive and well in many other countries. And what we must overcome is racism being the cause of conflict. And what we need to recognize human beings as human beings; to award merit.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

On The Washington Journal of C-SPAN https://www.c-span.org/video/?124979-1/the-trek-beginning (11 June 1999)
1990s, 1999

Country

“Human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity. As Truman said, “We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that Right Has Might”. That’s why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.
— And States need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not inconvenience. It is doing the right thing. No State can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose — for broadly shared aims –- in accordance with broadly accepted norms.
— No community anywhere suffers from too much rule of law; many do suffer from too little — and the international community is among them. This we must change.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Truman Library address (2006)

World , Law , Communication , Nature

“These thirty years, and more, that I've spent among exotic, barbaric, indomitable gods and goddesses, nourished on myths, obsessed by symbols, nursed and bewitched by so many images which have come down to me from those submerged worlds, today seem to me to be the stages of a long initiation. Each one of these divine figures, each of these myths or symbols, is connected to a danger that was confronted and overcome. How many times I was almost lost, gone astray in this labyrinth where I risked being killed… These were not only bits of knowledge acquired slowly and leisurely in books, but so many encounters, confrontations, and temptations. I realize perfectly well now all the dangers I skirted during this long quest, and, in the first place, the risk of forgetting that I had a goal… that I wanted to reach a "center."”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Journal entry (10 November 1959) published in No Souvenirs (1977) , 74-5. Journal II, 1957-1969 (1989).

God , Books , World , Knowledge

“Voltaire remarked that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft if you give them plenty of arsenic at the same time. The sheep, in this figure, may well stand for the complacent apologists of capitalism; Marx's penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations.”

Joan Robinson book An Essay on Marxian Economics

Source: An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966), Chapter III, The Labour Theory Of Value, p. 22

Time

“The innovation is hazardous, impossible for most producers. But if someone establishes a business having regard to this source of supply, and everything goes well, then he can produce a unit of product more cheaply, while at first the existing prices substantially continue to exist. He then makes a profit. Again he has contributed nothing but will and action, has done nothing but recombine existing factors. Again he is an entrepreneur, his profit entrepreneurial profit. And again the latter, and also the entrepreneurial function as such, perish in the vortex of the competition which streams after them. The case of the choice of new trade routes belongs here.”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter The Theory of Economic Development

The Theory of Economic Development (1934), Ch. 4 : Entrepreneurial Profit

Business

“Had the Pilgrim Fathers been met on Plymouth Rock by immigration officials; had their children been placed immediately in good free schools, and given the care of doctors, dentists, and nurses; had they found themselves in infinitely better circumstances than they had ever enjoyed in England, indulging in undreamed-of luxuries, and taught by kind-hearted philanthropists,—what pioneer virtues would they have developed, what sons would they have bred, what honours would history have accorded them? If our early settlers were masterful, they earned the right to mastery, and the price they paid for it was endurance. To the sacrifices which they made, to their high courage and heroic labours, we owe law, liberty, and well-being.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "The Modest Immigrant" (1916)

Children , School , Law , History

“Well…like, when you're born, you're a little baby, you're wrinkly and stuff, when you get older you sort of morph into a baby again…”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Xfm 01 December 2001
On Ageing

Baby

“Mathematics have a triple aim. They must furnish an instrument for the study of nature. But that is not all: they have a philosophic aim and, I dare maintain, an esthetic aim. They must aid the philosopher to fathom the notions of number, of space, of time. And above all, their adepts find therein delights analogous to those given by painting and music. They admire the delicate harmony of numbers and forms; they marvel when a new discovery opens to them an unexpected perspective; and has not the joy they thus feel the esthetic character, even though the senses take no part therein? Only a privileged few are called to enjoy it fully, it is true, but is not this the case for all the noblest arts?
This is why I do not hesitate to say that mathematics deserve to be cultivated for their own sake, and the theories inapplicable to physics as well as the others. Even if the physical aim and the esthetic aim were not united, we ought not to sacrifice either.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 5: Analysis and Physics

Art , Music , Feeling , Mathematics

“With the more endowed nations constrained by their own higher technological capacity for self-destruction as well as by self interest, war may have become a luxury that only the poor peoples of this world can afford.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Conclusion, p. 213.
The Grand Chessboard (1997)

War , People , World

“Well, before you are always self—you’re always self-centered. Everything is for you. Your self is God. And we make lousy gods. Humans make lousy gods, I think. We need to let God be God and us be what we are. I think that’s what changes: the focus on who you’re serving. You’re not serving you. You’re serving Christ.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

God , Thinking , Change , Christ

“…with the escort of the Military Secretaries, aids-de-camp and the President’s Body Guard, all in their splendid uniforms We made a glittering sight. Even in my best dress I looked drab beside my wife in a simple and well-chosen ensemble. I felt a little pride but was reminded of the entry of Caliph Omar into Damascus. He was offered ths surrender of the city if he came to the city in person. Omar rode his one-eyed camel with a servant on foot, and they traveled equal distance on foot in turn and rode in turn. Near Damascus, Omer was met by his generals Abu Obaida and Khalid bin Walid. Seeing his tattered and travel-worn dress they insisted that he should change into proper clothes and ride a caparisoned charger. Omar gave in and followed their advice. Very soon afterwards he stopped and asked for his former clothes and his camel saying “Pride is entering my soul, and the Prophet said that if a man has pride, the size of a mustard seed, he will not enter Paradise. I felt ashamed of myself and put aside the feeling at once and began thinking of other things.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

On the occasion of 15th August 1969, India’s Independence Day.
Source: Law in the Scientific Era, P.245-46.

Travel , Feeling , Soul , Thinking

“But it might not be true enough. It might be less than…well…sufficiently true in a particular instance.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 9

“What we have now come to regard as typical of Middle Eastern regimes is not typical of the past. The regime of Saddam Hussein, the regime of Hafiz al Assad, this kind of government, this kind of society, has no roots either in the Arab or in the Islamic past. It is due and let me be quite specific and explicit it is due to an importation from Europe, which comes in two phases.
Phase one, the 19th century, when they are becoming aware of their falling behind the modern world and need desperately to catch up, so they adopt all kinds of European devices with the best of intentions, which nevertheless have two harmful effects. One, they enormously strengthen the power of the state by placing in the hands of the ruler, weaponry and communication undreamt of in earlier times, so that even the smallest petty tyrant has greater powers over his people than Harun al-Rashid or Suleyman the Magnificent, or any of the legendary rulers of the past.
Second, even more deadly, in the traditional society there were many, many limits on the autocracy, the ruler. The whole Islamic political tradition is strongly against despotism. Traditional Islamic government is authoritarian, yes, but it is not despotic. On the contrary, there is a quite explicit rejection of despotism. And this wasn't just in theory; it was in practice too because in Islamic society, there were all sorts of established orders in society that acted as a restraining factor. The bazaar merchants, the craft guilds, the country gentry and the scribes, all of these were well organized groups who produced their own leaders from within the group. They were not appointed or dismissed by the governments. And they did operate effectively as a constraint.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

People , World , Communication , Time

“The first article in the foregoing quotation brings to my recollection the extraordinary performances of a professed fire-eater, whose name was Powel, well known in different parts of the kingdom about forty years ago. Among other wonderful feats, I saw him do the following: He ate the burning coals from the fire; he put a large bunch of matches lighted into his mouth, and blew the smoke of the sulphur through his nostrils; he carried a red-hot heater round the room in his teeth; and broiled a piece of beef-steak upon his tongue. To perform this, he lighted a piece of charcoal, which he put into his mouth beneath his tongue, the beef was laid upon the top; and one of the spectators blew upon the charcoal, to prevent the heat decreasing, till the meat was sufficiently broiled. By way of conclusion, he made a composition of pitch, brimstone, and other compustibles, to which he added several pieces of lead; the whole was melted in an iron ladle, and then set on fire; this he called his soup; and, taking it out of the ladle with a spoon of the same metal, he ate it in its state of liquefaction, and blazing furiously, without appearing to sustain the least injury.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 237
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Way , Light , Appearance , Parting

“Films like Speed belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done wrong, they seem like tired replays of old chase cliches. Done well, they're fun. Done as well as Speed, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-1994 of Speed (10 June 1994)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Personality , Speed

“There must be some leeway; the church operates across the world, including in totalitarian states where a fair criminal trial is unlikely for the accused. But some standards regarding inquiries and treatment of victims must surely be possible, as well as clear guidance on assessment of recruits to the priesthood. And the exit door for bishops needs to change. … We Catholics deserve this. Especially the children the church failed to protect.”

Catherine Pepinster (1959)

Pope Francis has utterly failed to tackle the church’s abuse scandal https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/pope-francis-catholic-church-abuse-scandal-failed (26 July 2018), The Guardian.

Children , World , Change

“There is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Terry Gifford, LLO, page 685
For more excerpts from Muir's account of the dog Stickeen in Alaska, see Stickeen.
1900s, Stickeen (1909)

Wisdom , Dogs , Suffering , Perfection

“The battle raged with great fury: victory was long doubtful, till two Indian princes, Brahman Dew and Dabishleem, with other reinforcements, joined their countrymen during the action, and inspired them with fresh courage. Mahmood at this moment perceiving his troops to waver, leaped from his horse, and, prostrating himself before God implored his assistance' At the same time he cheered his troops with such energy, that, ashamed to abandon their king, with whom they had so often fought and bled, they, with one accord, gave a loud shout and rushed forwards. In this charge the Moslems broke through the enemy's line, and laid 5,000 Hindus dead at their feet' On approaching the temple, he saw a superb edifice built of hewn stone. Its lofty roof was supported by fifty-six pillars curiously carved and set with precious stones. In the centre of the hall was Somnat, a stone idol five yards in height, two of which were sunk in the ground. The King, approaching the image, raised his mace and struck off its nose. He ordered two pieces of the idol to be broken off and sent to Ghizny, that one might be thrown at the threshold of the public mosque, and the other at the court door of his own palace. These identical fragments are to this day (now 600 years ago) to be seen at Ghizny. Two more fragments were reserved to be sent to Mecca and Medina. It is a well authenticated fact, that when Mahmood was thus employed in destroying this idol, a crowd of Brahmins petitioned his attendants and offered a quantity of gold if the King would desist from further mutilation. His officers endeavoured to persuade him to accept of the money; for they said that breaking one idol would not do away with idolatry altogether; that, therefore, it could serve no purpose to destroy the image entirely; but that such a sum of money given in charity among true believers would be a meritorious act. The King acknowledged that there might be reason in what they said, but replied, that if he should consent to such a measure, his name would be handed down to posterity as 'Mahmood the idol-seller', whereas he was desirous of being known as 'Mahmood the destroyer': he therefore directed the troops to proceed in their work'…'The Caliph of Bagdad, being informed of the expedition of the King of Ghizny, wrote him a congratulatory letter, in which he styled him 'The Guardian of the State, and of the Faith'; to his son, the Prince Ameer Musaood, he gave the title of 'The Lustre of Empire, and the Ornament of Religion'; and to his second son, the Ameer Yoosoof, the appellation of 'The Strength of the Arm of Fortune, and Establisher of Empires.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

He at the same time assured Mahmood, that to whomsoever he should bequeath the throne at his death, he himself would confirm and support the same.'
Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 38-49 (Alternative translation: "but the champion of Islam replied with disdain that he did not want his name to go down to posterity as Mahmud the idol-seller (but farosh) instead of Mahmud the breaker-of-idols (but shikan)." in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3)
Sack of Somnath (1025 CE)

Death , Money , God , Faith

“The limits of the body seem well defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Quotes about well page 50

Quotes about well
page 50