Quotes about well
page 67

“If the angels are unkind or the season is dark,
Or if in the end
Love just falls apart.
Well then here's to our destruction.
Baby let me be your soul driver.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Soul Driver"
Song lyrics, Human Touch (1992)

Love, Angels, Soul, Baby

“They were a well-behaved group, too; getting in trouble often enough so there could be no doubt about their masculinity, but not enough so that the discipline officer would remember any of their names.”

Michael Kurland (1938) American writer

Source: Tomorrow Knight (1976), Chapter 3 (p. 25)

“[ecclesiastical]Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles. The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the U. S.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

"Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations, Ecclesiastical Endowments"; this is an essay probably written sometime between 1817 and 1832. It has sometimes been incorrectly portrayed as having been uncompleted notes written sometime around 1789 while opposing the bill to establish the office of Congressional Chaplain. It was first published as "Aspects of Monopoly One Hundred Years Ago" in 1914 by Harper's Magazine and later in "Madison's Detached Memoranda" by Elizabeth Fleet in William and Mary Quarterly (1946). More information on this essay is available in "James Madison and Tax-Supported Chaplains" by Chris Rodda http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/16/235118/895 1810s

Religion, Evil

“It is well to recall that in 112 years of major league baseball, there has been only one bankruptcy filing.”

Andrew Zimbalist (1947) American economist

Source: Baseball And Billions - Updated edition - (1992), Chapter 3, Franchise Finances, p. 72.

“We are not asking whether all digital computers would do well in the game nor whether the computers at present available would do well, but whether there are imaginable computers which would do well.”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

Imagination, Game

“I hate to say it but Apple may end up reliving [with iPhone] its nightmare experience in the personal computer market — that is, arriving ahead of everyone else (in 1984) with a device that was really cool and really well built and really showed what the platform could do, but then keeping everything closed and thereby ending up a niche player.”

Daniel Lyons (1960) American writer

Thoughts on G1 and Apple http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2008/09/23/thoughts-on-g1-and-apple in RealDanLyons.com (23 September 2008)

Hate, Personality

“Michele Bachmann, and Buchanan, and Glenn Beck, all losing shows, all losing sponsors. We're growing. They're shrinking. We're expanding, and they're yelling, and they're complaining, and they're calling us names, like "conceited", and "arrogant", when all we're doing, is telling the truth. All we're doing, is saying that we're right. Because, well, we are.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

Truth

“I love the reach of TV as during a serial you reside in so many people's hearts and all the same time. But, in films and theatre your character has a definite graph and it is defined very well. When you choose to do a film or enact a play, from beginning to end you know your part. And as an actor it gives me comfort to know this graph. In television and particularly in some of the serials often this is not defined. Your role can change, which is very unsettling for me. It's one major reason why I am comfy doing theatre and films.”

Mukta Barve (1979) Indian actress

I enjoyed TV, but prefer doing films & theatre: Mukta Barve http://m.timesofindia.com/entertainment/marathi/movies/news/I-enjoyed-TV-but-prefer-doing-films-theatre-Mukta-Barve/articleshow/18969020.cms

Love, People, Change, Time

“They [the association directors] worked together in such bodies as the Board of Directors of the Public Administration Service. They worked together well in smaller groups when matters came up of common interest. But I was always careful, extremely careful, not to attempt to bind them together in any way as a corporate body, and I was meticulous in observing their utter independence.”

Louis Brownlow (1879–1963) American mayor

(Brownlow 1958, 290), as cited in: Mary E. Guy, ‎Marilyn M. Rubin (2015), Public Administration Evolving. p. 222
A Passion for Anonymity, 1955

Way

“I said it is good for centrifuges to operate, but it is also important that the country operates as well and the wheels of industry are turning.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Presidential campaign, 2013

Country

“We Americans have a long history of fighting "big," wisely or not. That we could be motivated to fight "big" again is not something new.
It would be something new, and something very important, if an equal number could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built within the idea of "intellectual property." Not because balance is alien to our tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But because the muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called "property" is not well exercised within this tradition anymore.
If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place of our tragedy.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

Exercises, History, Motivation, Idea

“The shrewd, calculating commercialism which tries all human relations by pecuniary standards, the acquisitiveness which cannot rest while there are competitors to be conquered or profits to be won, the love of social power and hunger for economic gain—these irrepressible appetites had evoked from time immemorial the warnings and denunciations of saints and sages. Plunged in the cleansing waters of later Puritanism, the qualities which less enlightened ages had denounced as social vices emerged as economic virtues. They emerged as moral virtues as well. For the world exists not to be enjoyed, but to be conquered. Only its conqueror deserves the name of Christian. For such a philosophy, the question, [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+8%3A36&version=KJV "What shall it profit a man?"] carries no sting. In winning the world, he wins the salvation of his own soul as well.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 4
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Love, Hunger, Age, World

“Being a DJ, I take the art of digging seriously… it has almost a karmic element of, 'I was meant to find this on top.' or, 'I was meant to pull this out becuase it works so well with this.' So it has a lot of meaning for me personally.”

DJ Shadow (1972) American trip-hop musician

From the documentary Scratch

Art, Personality

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Richard Price (8 January 1789)
1780s

People

“GAVRAS: Well, he’s bigger than a pop star. I mean, when he came to Paris in 2007, he was supposed to stay at the Hôtel de Marigny, which is the best hotel. But Gaddafi came with a tent. It was this huge flagged tent—just him and his army guards, who were all girls. They were in these crazy leopard outfits. I mean, Gaddafi is way better dressed than any pop star in the world.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

World, Way, Girl, Star

“Roger: Well it’s been the same members of the band since ‘92 with the exception of one horn player. So it’s been the four of us since the beginning of the band and then we’ve had some different horn players but JR’s the new guy and he’s been in the band for eight years so it hasn’t been that drastic.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Guy

“In the morning we saw that the sea was rough, and people said there would be trouble.... Fifty men volunteered to go at once, and followed the old sailor without a word. We descended the cliffs to the beach, and there we saw a terrible sight : several vessels rushing, one after the other, at fearful speed, upon our rocks. Our men put three boats out to sea, but before they had rowed ten strokes one boat sank, another was upset by a huge breaker, while a third was thrown upon the beach.... The sea threw up hundreds of corpses, as well as quantities of cargo... Then came a fourth, fifth and sixth vessel, all of which were lost with their crew and cargo alike, upon the rocks. The tempest was furious... The next morning.... As I was passing by a hollow in the cliff, I saw a large sail spread, as I thought, over a bale of merchandise. I lifted the sail and saw a heap of corpses. I was so frightened that I ran home, and found my mother and grandmother on their knees, praying for the shipwrecked sailors.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote c. 1870; cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 22
taken from Millet's youth-memories, about the years he lived as an boy close to the wild coast of Normandy, written down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier
1870 - 1875

Men, People, Fear, Home

“Well, in a case like this, what do we do? We spit in our hands and we start over!”

Jacques Parizeau (1930–2015) Canadian politician

Bon, ben, dans un cas comme ça, qu'est-ce qu'on fait? On se crache dans les mains et on recommence!
1995 referendum concession speech.

“There's a deeper reason, though, for not striving for excellence,… and it has to do with how we view ourselves and our endeavors in this world. Many of us recognize that not trying is a reasonable excuse for not succeeding. That is, if we don't give something our best effort, we can always point to that fact as the basis for poor results. If, on the other hand, we give… everything we've got and still don't win, well, that's a fairly bitter pill to swallow…. I don't buy this defeatist attitude.”

John Vorhaus

Poker Night (2004)

World, Effort

“There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people and that's the only way that our campaign could be doing what it's doing.And I'm not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across who are praying that a little will become much and it has, and it defies all explanation. It has confounded the pundits, and I'm enjoying every minute of their trying to figure it out. And until they look at it from a just experience beyond human, they'll never figure it out. And that's probably just as well. That's honestly why its happening.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Liberty University convocation, , quoted in * 2007-12-06
Huckabee: God Wants Me to Be President
James Joyner
Outside the Beltway
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/huckabee_god_wants_me_to_be_president/
asked what he attributed his surge in the polls to

People, Way, Boy, Fish

“A French writer has paid the English a very well deserved compliment. He says that they never commit a useless crime. When they hire a man to assassinate an Irish patriot, when they blow a Sepoy from the mouth of a cannon, when they produce a famine in one of their dependencies, they have always an ulterior motive.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

The Murder Machine

Motivation, Dependency

“If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in Vincent's letter to Emile Bernard, from Paris, about December 1887; from letter 575 - vangoghletters http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let575/letter.html] 1880s, 1887

Beauty, Thinking, Painting

“The Pythagoreans discovered the existence of incommensurable lines, or of irrationals. This was, doubtless, first discovered with reference to the diagonal of a square which is incommensurable with the side, being in the ratio to it of √2 to 1. The Pythagorean proof of this particular case survives in Aristotle and in a proposition interpolated in Euclid's Book X.; it is by a reductio ad absurdum proving that, if the diagonal is commensurable with the side, the same number must be both odd and even. This discovery of the incommensurable… showed that the theory of proportion invented by Pythagoras was not of universal application and therefore that propositions proved by means of it were not really established…. The fatal flaw thus revealed in the body of geometry was not removed till Eudoxus discovered the great theory of proportion (expounded in Euclid's Book V.), which is applicable to incommensurable as well as to commensurable magnitudes.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

p, 125
Achimedes (1920)

Books, Universe

“The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past. … The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric.”

Lucio Russo (1944) Italian historian and scientist

11.10, "The Erasure of Ancient Science", pp. 390–391
The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

Age, History, Thinking, Science

“They use [the term Isolationist] all the time, and they do that to be very negative. There are a few people in the country who say, "Well, that's good. I sort of like that term." I don't particularly like the term because I do not think I am an isolationist at all. Because along with the advice of not getting involved in entangling alliances and into the internal affairs of other countries, the Founders said – and it's permissible under the Constitution – to be friends with people, trade with people, communicate with them, and get along with them – but stay out of the military alliances. The irony is they accuse us, who would like to be less interventionist and keep our troops at home, of being isolationist. Yet if you look at the results of the policy of the last six years, we find that we are more isolated than ever before. So I claim the policy of those who charge us with being isolationists is really diplomatic isolationism. They are not willing to talk to Syria. They are not willing to talk to Iran. They are not willing to trade with people that might have questionable people in charge. We have literally isolated ourselves. We have less friends and more enemies than ever before. So in a way, it's one of the unintended consequences of their charges. They are the true isolationists, I believe.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Scott Horton, April 4, 2007 http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=10798 2000s, 2006-2009

People, Way, Home, Communication

“When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people.”

Frank Borman (1928) NASA astronaut

Newsweek magazine, 23 December 1968 http://www.spacequotations.com/earth.html

People, World, Hell, Learning

“If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person (for although some better individuals momentarily belong to the public they nevertheless have something concrete about them, which holds them in its grip even if they have not attained the supreme religious attitude), I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is some one superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coat-tails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity – until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled – and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The leveling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its significance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled.”

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

The Present Age 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Alexander Dru 1962, p. 65-66
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

World, Dogs, Way, Imagination

“The capacity to distinguish between empirical knowledge and value-judgments, and the fulfillment of the scientific duty to see the factual truth as well as the practical duty to stand up for our own ideals constitute the program to which we wish to adhere with ever increasing firmness.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Max Weber, “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy” (1904)

Truth, Knowledge

“Probably even more than the architecture I'd be drawn to landscape. That's my first love, landscape... All kinds of landscape, if it's not cluttered up and vandalised. Yesterday we went out to Blenheim, and I love the flatness and the trees. I like all kinds. And where I'm from, the central valley of Virginia, is not one of the most exciting landscapes in the world, but it's one of the most beautiful. It's very beautiful because it has everything. It has mountains, there are streams, there are fields, beautiful trees. And architecture sits very well in it... And I've always lived in the south of Italy, because it’s more excitable. It's volcanic. The land affects people naturally, that's part of the characteristics, for me, of a people, in a sense.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 173

Love, People, World, Beauty

“There is one type of functional advantage that enjoys in this dark struggle unique status and deserves special attention. As the force of path dependency in history wanes, and as different forms of life and consciousness get more jumbled together, this force gains in importance. It is negative capabilityː the power to act nonformulaically, in defiance of what rules and routines would predict, a power that may be inspired and strengthened, or discouraged and weakened, by our arrangements and practices as well as by our ways of thinking and feeling.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 134

Life, Way, Feeling, History

“I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed — I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say Cinderella had to like being queen?”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Kiss, Princess

“Young Knight learn to love God and revere women so that your honour grows. Practice knighthood and learn the Art that dignifies you, and brings you honour in wars. Wrestle well and wield lance, spear, sword, and dagger manfully, whose use in others' hands is wasted. Strike bravely and hard there! Rush to strike or miss. Those with wisdom loath the one forced to defend. This you should grasp: All arts have length and measure. Whatever you undertake, use deliberation. In earnest or in play, be of good cheer and vitality, so you may be attentive and with good courage ponder what action you should take, so that none may touch you, since good courage and strength make your enemies hesitate. Keep in mind to give no-one any advantage. Avoid foolhardiness, do not attempt to match four or six opponents at once. Restrain your ambition, this will benefit you. He is a courageous man who can stand against his equal, while it is no shame to flee from four or six.”

Johannes Lichtenauer (1300–1389) Founder and grand master of the German School of Swordsmanship

MS 3227a

Love, Wisdom, Women, God

“Nor do piecemeal steps however well intended, even partially resolve problems that have reached a universal, global and catastrophic character. If anything, partial 'solutions' serve merely as cosmetics to conceal the deep seated nature of the ecological crisis. They thereby deflect public attention and theoretical insight from an adequate understanding of the depth and scope of the necessary changes.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

The Ecology of Freedom (1982)

Understanding, Nature, Problem, Universe

“And my generals, by the way, they're not going on television, OK? So the enemy can learn all about it. Oh, well, then we attack.”

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

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)

Way, Learning

“Everything that happened prior to and during 2000 was premeditated, well planned with all the personal graffiti being churned out through government offices and business outlets … ludicrous paraphernalia designed to malign the former President's family's character. Some members of the 2000 and current Senate were openly telling the public that the Government was going to be changed soon. So what was the Fijian cause all about?”

Ateca Ganilau (1951) Fijian chief

Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, 24 July, 2005

Family, Business, Change, Personality

“I like working on sponge because it's a simple, light material and always ready to use. The colour and texture meet my aesthetic requirements and it has a lolof volume and physically, is very present in the space. The ink or paint is immediately absorbed into the foam surface, making any corrections almost impossible. It is a material which lends itself to quick, fast application and is particularly good for spontaneous sketching with paint squeezed directly from the tube. The fact that these works will not last (sponge is not a very durable material) does not deter me; it suits the character of the work very well and to an extent reflects my ideas about art.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

At the time of writing exhibition catalogue, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, 1998.

Art, Idea, Light, Painting

“Then soon with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well.”

Samuel Woodworth The Old Oaken Bucket

The Old Oaken Bucket (1817)

Truth

“We should be well aware of the full importance of this day, because today, within the welcoming walls of Boulogne-sur-Mer, there meet not Frenchmen with Englishmen, not Russians with Poles, but people with people.”

Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof (1859–1917) Polish ophthalmologist and inventor of Esperanto

Address to the First World Congress of Esperanto, Bologne-sur-Mer, France. 5 August 1905.

People

“I was too curvy and too busty and a little too short. And I was a little bit self-conscious about it. But I was by no means heavy, I just — well, you have hips and boobs, and that's it. Haute couture, you don't really see girls with big boobs. And I always wanted first to be a model. So I had to say, "OK, you're going to find other things to do in this industry, or it's maybe not my industry."”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Discussing being rejected at the beginning of her modeling career, as quoted in Allure Magazine, May 2012

Girl

“In our fluctuations of feeling, it is well to remember that Jesus admits no change in His affections; your heart is not the compass Jesus saileth by.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 93.

Feeling, Change, Heart

“The example we would do well to keep in front of us is that of the Dalai Lama. He was giving a discourse on a Tibetan text about meditation. He read out a sentence, laughed and remarked, ‘Buddhist theories of creation, a disgrace! Must throw them out!’ He advises that we should keep a wastepaper basket nearby – whatever doesn’t accord with what we know now, we should cast into that basket. ‘Buddhism must face facts,’ that is what he teaches. Accordingly, he has opened Buddhist texts to minute examination. (…) That reflects confidence in one’s tradition. That is true service to the tradition. That is the way to preserve for the future ‘the pearl of great price’ in it.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Way, Confidence, Reading, Future

“Having been connected with industry during my entire life, it seems eminently proper that I should turn back, in part, the proceeds of that activity with the hope of promoting a broader as well as a better understanding of the economic principles and national policies which have characterized American enterprise down through the years.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan (1936); Cited in: " OBITUARY : Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Dead at 90; G.M. Leader and Philanthropist http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0523.html," the New York Times, February 18, 1966. This article comments: Toward the end of the year [1936] Mr. Sloan made a substantial foray into philanthropy by endowing the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with $10-million.

Life, Hope, Understanding, Parting

“Well, I'd say, and this is probably a change from what I would have said when I was younger: Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come. And I think the recent period has illustrated that. The governor of the Bank of England seems to have forgotten or not known that there was no bank insurance in England, so when Northern Rock got a run, he was surprised. Well, he shouldn't have been.
But history doesn't tell its own story. You've got to bring to it all the statistical testings that are possible. And we have a lot more information now than we used to.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Conor Clarke, An Interview With Paul Samuelson http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/an-interview-with-paul-samuelson-part-two/19627/, Part Two (2009) New millennium

History, Thinking, Study, Change

“He was just Ron and I kinda liked him, mostly because he wrote well, and I never felt he took all that Scientology nonsense seriously but knew how to make a good buck, and he liked me, and… well, he was a friend who died.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Introduction to Angry Candy (1988)

“Now I been out in the desert, just doin' my time.
Searchin' through the dust, lookin' for a sign.
If there's a light up ahead well brother I don't know.
But I got this fever burnin' in my soul.
So let's take the good times as they go,
And I'll meet you further on up the road.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Further On (Up the Road)"
Song lyrics, The Rising (2002)

Soul, Light, Time

“It's the kind of movie where you ask people how they liked it, and they say, "Well, it was well made," and then they wince.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-ringers-1988 of Dead Ringers (23 September 1988) Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

People

“As America’s Founders well understood, a society enjoying a multiplicity of institutions, interests, and intact communities (i. e., factions) is much more difficult to subjugate by a single central power, be it a king, a dictator, or a bureaucracy.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

Communication

“Well, here I suppose is my life, or part of it, by which I would wish to be judged… poems which have been written from a sense of compulsion, a real need to explore and articulate experiences which have been important to me.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Introductory Note

Life, Sense, Parting

“Western social Darwinists, who include modernisation and development theorists and their kindred spirits (UN agencies, human rights organisations and activists, NGOs, the IMF, the World Bank, the US State Department, etc) would see the possible "advance" of the Arab world (as well as the rest of the "underdeveloped" world) toward a western-defined and sponsored modernity as part of a historical teleology wherein non-Europeans who are still at the stage of European childhood will eventually replicate European "progress" toward modern forms of organisation, sociality, economics, politics and sexual desires. What is emerging in the Arab (and the rest of the third) world is not some universal schema of the march of history but rather the imposition of these western modes by different forceful means and their adoption by third world elites, thus foreclosing and repressing myriad ways of movement and change and ensuring that only one way for transformation is made possible.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 49-50.
Desiring Arabs

World, Way, History, Universe

“Browsing in books as lovers do, they were only being considerate, because their tenderness to each other made them tender towards others as well.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 192

Books, Lovers

“A key characteristic of the engineering culture is that the individual engineer’s commitment is to technical challenge rather than to a given company. There is no intrinsic loyalty to an employer as such. An employer is good only for providing the sandbox in which to play. If there is no challenge or if resources fail to be provided, the engineer will seek employment elsewhere. In the engineering culture, people, organization, and bureaucracy are constraints to be overcome. In the ideal organization everything is automated so that people cannot screw it up. There is a joke that says it all. A plant is being managed by one man and one dog. It is the job of the man to feed the dog, and it is the job of the dog to keep the man from touching the equipment. Or, as two Boeing engineers were overheard to say during a landing at Seattle, “What a waste it is to have those people in the cockpit when the plane could land itself perfectly well.” Just as there is no loyalty to an employer, there is no loyalty to the customer. As we will see later, if trade-offs had to be made between building the next generation of “fun” computers and meeting the needs of “dumb” customers who wanted turnkey products, the engineers at DEC always opted for technological advancement and paid attention only to those customers who provided a technical challenge.”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Edgar H. Schein (2010). Dec Is Dead, Long Live Dec: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equiment Corporation. p. 60

People, Dogs, Loyalty

“And sure th' Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Stanza 7
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

“Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don’t need certainty in order to act on a well-founded suspicion.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 368

“The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ … of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)

Death, Sense

“I dinnae Tam, ah jist dinnae. Life's boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realize that we're aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which jist interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill oor lives up wi shite, shite like joabs n relationships, tae delude ourselves intae thinkin that it isnae aw totally pointless. Smack's an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions. It's the only really honest drug. It disnae alter yir consciousness. It jist gies ye a hit and a sense ay well-being. After that, ye see the misery ay the world as it is, and ye cannae anesthaetise yirsel against it.”

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Renton, "Relapsing: Cock Problems" (Chapter 2, Story 4).
Trainspotting (1993)

Life, World, Hope, Disappointment

“Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 364

Knowledge, Dependency

“I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most loveable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I - well, I had them.”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw (1898), Ch. II.

World, Heart

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

"A Few Words to a Young Writer" http://www.ursulakleguin.com/WordsYoungWriter.html (2008)

Truth, Fear, Art, Way

“[Interviewer: Do you believe in climate change? Do you think it exists? ] Er, there is a cooling and there is a heating, and I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. [Interviewer: Right. ] Right? That wasn't working too well, because it was getting too cold all over the place. The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they're setting records, OK, they're at a record level.”

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

Interviewed on British TV https://www.itv.com/news/2018-01-29/what-we-learned-from-donald-trumps-interview-with-itv/ (28 January 2018) 2010s, 2018, January

Thinking, Change

“I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." It is precisely what I mean by having one's soul obliterated, hermetically closed. Here it would be the special case of intellectual hermetism.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Soul, Nature, Thinking, Effort

“Music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
And it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Mr. Tanner
Song lyrics, Short Stories (1974)

Life, Happiness, Music, Feeling

“Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays (Nation Books, 2004): On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2004

“History, as well as life itself, is complicated; neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Page 349
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)

Life, History

“Well, actually, I'm a psychic being, and you know, we don't concern ourselves with being born; we concern ourselves with being eternal; we deal with the spirit.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

Interview with Jennifer Rycenga (2 November 1988)

“Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the case in a well-ordered stomach.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: Confessions of a Young Man http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12278/12278-h/12278-h.htm (1886), Ch. 2.

Books, Time, Future, Season

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men, God, Pleasure, Education

“The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. I mean, they're a pretty monolithic party. They pretty much, they all behave the same, they all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party. Again, the Democrats abduct everybody you can think of. So, as this gentleman was talking about, it's a coalition, a lot of it independent. The problem is, we gotta make sure that turns into a party, which means this: I've gotta spend time in the communities, and our folks gotta spend time in the communities. I think, we're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things, particularly on jobs, and housing, and business opportunities and college opportunities, and so fourth. I think, there has been a lot of progress in the last 20-40 years, but the stakes keep changing. I think there's a lot of folks who vote, maybe right now, in the Asian-American communities, who don't wanna vote Democrats, but they're angry with the President on his immigration policy, the Patriot Act. But, what we need to do while this is going on, is develop a really close relationship with the Asian-American community, so later on there's gonna be a benefit, you know, more equal division. There'll be some party loyalty, as people would rememeber that we were there when it really made a difference. That's really what I'm trying to do. If I come in here 8 weeks before the elections, we're not getting anywhere. Asking if you would vote, you're still mad at the lesser of two evils. So that's why I'm here 3.5 years before the elections. We want different kind of people to run for office, too. We want a very diverse group of people running for office, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos. I think Villaraigosa's election in Los Angeles is incredibly important for the Democratic Party. Bush can go out and talk all he wants about "this is the party of opportunity", you know, he can make his appointments, Condi Rice, or, what's this guy's name, Commerce Secretary, Gutierrez. But you can't succeed electorally if you're a person of color in then Republican Party, there're very few people who have succeeded. You can pick some out, JC Watts, I'm trying to think of an Asian-American who's been a success who's a Republican, I can't think of one off the top of my head. You know, there's always a few, but not many. Because this is the party of opportunity for people of color, and for communities of color. And we're hoping to cement that relationship so that'll always be that way. [Q: You've been very tough on the Republicans, some Democrats criticized you over the weeked for doing that, Joe Biden…] I just got off the phone with John Edwards. What happened was, John Edwards was, in a sense, set up by the reporter, "well you know, Governor Dean said this". Well what I said was, the Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people. That's essentially the gist of the quote, and, you know, the RNC put out a press release. I don't think there's a lot of difference between me and John Edwards right now, I haven't spoken to Senator Biden, but I'm sure that I will. Today, it's all over the wires that Durbin and Sheila Jackson Lee and all of these folks are coming to my defense. Look, we have to be tough on the Republicans; the Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans, and they don't have any understanding of what it is to have to go out and try to make ends meet. You know, the context of what I was talking about was these long lines that you have to wait in to vote. How could you design a system that sometimes causes people to vote, to stand in line for 6 or 8 hours, if you had any understanding what their lives are like: they gotta pick up the kids, they gotta work, sometimes they have two jobs. So that was the context of the remarks. [crosstalk/laughter] This is one of those flaps that comes up once in awhile when I get tough, but I think we all wanna be tougher on the Republicans.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Discussion with reporters Portia Li and Carla Marinucci, in San Francisco http://web.archive.org/web/20060427191647/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/07/MNdean07.TMP&o=1, June 6, 2005

People, Hope, Angels, Color

“As I opened the door — I heard cattle — many — in the pens over by the track — lowing — I wonder if you ever heard a whole lot of cattle lowing — it sounds different here — too — just ground and sky — and the lowing cattle — you hardly see — either them or the pens — the pens are of weather beaten boards — take on the color of the ground it seems — I like it and I don't like it — its like music — I made up a tune this morning — Well — I heard the cattle — as I opened the door — and I liked it and I didn't liked it — then I read your letter as I walked to breakfast — a great letter — Anita”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (November, 1916), p. 216
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Music, Color, Reading, Weather

“At an ink-stained desk, with his chin cupped in his hands, Titus was contemplating, as in a dream, the chalk-marks on the blackboard. They represented a sum in short division, but might as well have been some hieroglyphic message from a moonstruck prophet to his lost tribe a thousand years ago.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 4, section 2 (p. 410)

Dreams

“Purify yourself by a well-ordered and useful life. Watch over your thoughts, feelings, words and actions. This will clear your vision.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Purification
Source: "I am That." P.27.

Life, Feeling

“A difficulty in seeking Truth is the notion that certain men are ordained of heaven to seek Truth for all mankind and that we are to accept their acquisitions in the place of seeking for ourselves. We can never attain Truth by proxy. By divine ordination every man is an original investigator of Truth. He denies his own reason who hands over his religious views and opinions to any priest or religious teacher… We are to accept nothing on the opinions of others. What another man has thought and believed, what a Church Council or synod has formulated is nothing to me, only that it may be a reason for personal investigation ending in acceptance or rejection as I may find it in harmony with reason and well established truth.”

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

Sermon (1899)

Men, Truth, Teachers, Personality

“The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant — no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

Effort, Success

“It is not, I think, going too far to say, that every fact connected with the human organization goes to prove, that man was originally formed a frugivorous animal … This opinion is principally derived from the formation of his teeth and digestive organs, as well as from the character of his skin, and the general structure of his limbs. It is not my intention now to go further into the discussion of this subject, than to observe, that if analogy be allowed to have any weight in the argument, it is wholly on that side of the question which I have just taken. Those animals, whose teeth and digestive apparatus most nearly resemble our own, namely, the apes and monkeys, are undoubtedly frugivorous.”

Thomas Bell (zoologist)

The Anatomy, Physiology, and Diseases of the Teeth, Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830, p. 35 https://books.google.it/books?id=LK-_LIeEq2oC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35.

Question, Thinking, Animals

“No need to feel pleas'd with yourself. What you found was not their sacred Well, but only a Representation of it.”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Chapter 74

Feeling

“What does it mean to be “successful”? How do you achieve your dreams?
Does it mean creating an impressive list of achievements? Does it mean gaining significant wealth, status, position, and power? Maybe it means pleasing your parents, family, and friends?
I wrote this book to address these questions and to create a road map to help you achieve your aspirations. Following this road map involves taking a series of steps and answering a set of questions, all of which require you to look inward as well as outward. It also involves developing a set of new skills and habits, some of which may be challenging and uncomfortable for you.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: What You're Really Meant To Do, 2013, p. 1; Lead paragraph

Books, Family, Dreams, Question

“"Emile will serve you well. He's an animal, but animals come in handy if they're trained right." "Right," Bunting said, but thinking, When you're gone, Archie, I'll be boss and I'll chose my own right arms. "Bunting," Archie said, looking up again, "I'll be telling Emile about it. Emile Janza will be looking forward to his job as your assistant. And Emile doesn't like to be disappointed. He's very unpredictable and gets very physical when he's disappointed. Never disappoint Emile Janza, Bunting."”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 203

Disappointment, Thinking, Animals, Training

“An housbande can not well thryue by his come without he haue other cattell, nor by his cattell without come. For els he shall be a byer, a borrower or a beggar.”

Anthony Fitzherbert (1470–1538) English judge, scholar and legal author

Source: The book of the husbandry. (1523/1882), p. 42; Cited in footnote of Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres https://archive.org/stream/cu31924062805209#page/n105/mode/2up/search/husbandry, A Virginia farmer (translator) (1913). p. 85.

“You resent death. You regret death. But as for your own life, you know perfectly well that no one can threaten it at all. Death is something that happens to someone else.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

Life, Death

“We have to always look ahead enough moves to be well prepared, even for victory!”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Part III, Epilogue, p. 204
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Victory

“On Charley Patton's voice and music style: I heard this fella, and his voice sounded like my voice. I’d always thought, ‘Well, I could never be a singer with this horrible voice’. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. Still do. But he sounded like the same kind of thing. I didn’t know black American terms: a boll weevil or turnpike blues. But there was an emotion that clicked with me. I became fascinated with gospel blues. I still play more gospel than Chicago. I very rarely go anywhere near that speed, aggression, Clapton thing. Someone once reviewed me, saying the testosterone was missing from my blues solos, because I don’t do Chicago. It’s just alien to me.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Hate, Music, Speed

“But no - what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it: before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape! Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass on wall of well. On top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What is our hero to do? What action does our puranic man quintessential Indian, take in the situation? He bends with the branch and licks up the honey…. What did you expect? Some neat solution to the problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachchan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly. One strength of Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved and it learns to make best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, india as we know it could not survive.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Way, Problem, Grass, Learning

“To disband the armies and destroy the forts, to diffuse love and brotherhood, and peace and justice in the place of war and strife, could tend only to the buidling up of character, the elevation of the soul, and the strength and well-being of the state.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: Resist Not Evil (1904), p. 39

Love, War, Peace, Justice

“Yeah, just recently Ted Lilly was pitching in the first inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he slipped twice on two bunt plays. Anyways, Lou [Piniella] came out to check on him and asked him if he had his metal spikes on and he did. Lou then said well do you have any other cleats in the locker room and Ted said, "Skip, your zippers down." Lou was really embarrassed about that. He turns to do something about it, but then realized that he was on national TV and realized he couldn't do anything. That was a very awkward, but funny story.”

Michael Barrett (1976) baseball catcher and manager

“A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead;
They followed still his crooked way
And lost a hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.”

Sam Walter Foss (1858–1911) American writer

The Calf-Path http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Calf_Path, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Men, Way, Dead

“Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same foreign right, a right that I do not give or take to myself. Thus the Communists say, equal labour entitles man to equal enjoyment. […] No, equal labour does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. But, if you have laboured and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then – ‘it serves you right.’ If you take the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before, a, ‘well-earned right’ of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their right, as by laying hands on it would become your right.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 170, 171
The Ego and Its Own (1844)

God, People, Nature

“Well, I will say this. And this is the main thing to remember. Macroeconomics -- even with all of our computers and with all of our information -- is not an exact science and is incapable of being an exact science. It can be better or it can be worse, but there isn't guaranteed predictability in these matters.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Conor Clarke, An Interview With Paul Samuelson, Part One http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/an-interview-with-paul-samuelson-part-one/19572/ (2009) New millennium

Science

“Patton looked like his father and had similar mannerisms. Their speech was somewhat alike as well. It was pretty evident that young Patton was the son of the old man. However, the impressive thing about George is that he didn't concern himself with his last name. He went out and made a career, earning everything on his own… He did a very good job in command of the 11th ACR and handled himself professionally. It's quite a burden the son of a senior officer has to carry and I must say, to his credit, he did it well. Because down through history, when you look at the sons of famous people, they were not all winners.”

William Westmoreland (1914–2005) United States Army general

On George S. Patton, IV, son of the famous World War II American general. As quoted in The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel, p. 129-130

People, History

“The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,—that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Men, Happiness, Truth, Age

“When there is time to think about i think, but when there is time to be with family, i try to do justice to that aspect of my life as well.”

Sachin Tendulkar (1973) A former Indian cricketer from India and one of the greatest cricketers ever seen in the world

Balance your life with Career and Family http://www.storypick.com/quotes-by-tendulkar/

Life, Family, Justice, Thinking

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind,—this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for. The more we think of it, the more attractive and desirable it becomes. To do some work that is needed, and to do it thoroughly well; to make our toil count for something in adding to the sum total of what is actually profitable for humanity; to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or, better still, to make one wholesome idea take root in a mind that was bare and fallow; to make our example count for something on the side of honesty and cheerfulness, and courage, and good faith, and love - this is an aim for life which is very wide, and yet very definite, as clear as light. It is not in the least vague. It is only free; it has the power to embody itself in a thousand forms without changing its character. Those who seek it know what it means, however it may be expressed. It is real and genuine and satisfying. There is nothing beyond it, because there can be no higher practical result of effort. It is the translation, through many languages, of the true, divine purpose of all the work and labor that is done beneath the sun, into one final, universal word. It is the active consciousness of personal harmony with the will of God who worketh hitherto.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: Ships and Havens https://archive.org/stream/shipshavens00vand#page/28/mode/2up/search/more+we+think+of+it (1897), p.27

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“White southerners saw Lincoln as anti-slavery and his election as a direct threat to the survival of the peculiar institution. Are you going to tell me that they were stupid or deluded? Is that any way for white southerners to honor their ancestors, by ridiculing their intelligence? Indeed, Stephen Douglas' decision to accuse Lincoln of embracing racial equality tells us that playing the race, or racism, card in the 1850s was alive and well, because Douglas believed that he would gain political traction among racist Illinois voters, who were white, after all, by associating Lincoln with the cause of black equality. Lincoln's response was thus also an issue of political survival. So was his decision not to publicize his support for limited black suffrage in Louisiana in 1864. He advanced the idea in a private letter, but waited thirteen months until he made his sentiment public, and three days after he made that sentiment public, he fell victim to an assassin's bullet because that assassin could not bear the thought of black equality. Lincoln knew he lived in a racist America, North and South.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

Brooks D. Simpson. "Race and Slavery, North and South: Some Logical Fallacies" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/race-and-slavery-north-and-south-some-logical-fallacies/#comment-47560 (18 June 2011), Crossroads, WordPress 2010s

Stupidity, Way, Intelligence, Idea