Quotes about well (10000 quotes, page 75)

“The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)

Money

“Is thine a life of devotion, of meekness and humility, of supreme attachment to heavenly and divine things; of self-denial and of universal benevolence? If after candid examination you find reason to hope that you are one of God's dear children washed with His blood, sanctified by the Spirit, clothed with the righteousness of the Well Beloved — cherish that hope as the gift of heaven. Dismiss your fears; bind yourself to be the Lord's in an everlasting covenant; think less of yourself and more and more of the name, the cross, the glory of your Redeemer. Henceforth "let your light shine."”

Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 117.

Life , God , Children , Fear

“Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and murderers, have first been torturers of animals. The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization. The Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination; we Germans, not half well enough. Buddhism has done more in this direction than Christianity, and Schopenhauer more than all ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with sentient Nature which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer, is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual, yet often unhealthy and unprofitable philosophy.”

David Strauss (1808–1874) German theologian

The Old Faith and the New (Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1872, translated from the 6th edition by M. Blind, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), vol. II, part IV, ch. 71, pp. 59 https://archive.org/stream/oldfaithnewconfe01stra#page/59/mode/2up-60.

Men , History , Nature , Animals

“One thing that cannot be denied to the realists: a constant and intense desire to write well, to write artistically. When I think of what they have done in the matter of the use of words, of the myriad verbal effects they have discovered, of the thousand forms of composition they have created, how they have remodelled and refashioned the language in their untiring striving for intensity of expression for the very osmazome of art, I am lost in ultimate wonder and admiration.”

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. 13.

Art , Thinking

“You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that's dying and something that's being born.”

Andy Goldsworthy (1956) British sculptor and photographer

"Searching for the window into nature's soul" http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues97/feb97/golds.html Smithsonian magazine (February 1997)

“The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

2012 Dr. Dobb's Interview with Alan Kay http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442
2010s

People , Error , Nature , Thinking

“Suddenly I found that I'd lost my way in this city / The streets and the thousands of faces all bleed into one
I'm having trouble just finding some soul in this town
It's all they can do to be part of the queue
'There'll be no tomorrow' they say / Well I say 'More's the pity”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Part of the Queue
Don't Believe the Truth (2005)

Way , Soul , Parting

“Many pro football players run 100 yards with a ball while a bunch of HUGE guys try to stop them, hurt them, stomp on them etc. They do it because they get paid well! Do you REALLY believe God's promises about rewards for the martyrs? (Matthew 5:10; 24:13; 1 Thessalonians 3:4; 1 Timothy 2:12; 3:12, etc.) The 1st century Christians sure did! The Romans were amazed that they seemed so eager to die for their faith! Tens of thousands are dying yearly in Communist, Hindu and Muslim countries RIGHT NOW. Are we willing to suffer for the Lord? We will find out!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 157

God , Faith , Guy , Suffering

“Well, remember, all that area from which the Gore family comes was solid Democrat and progressive under Roosevelt for several decades. So they just didn't become Republicans because they all wanted to be bankers. They became it because they didn't like black people, and they thought the Democrats were pushing integration too fast. And that's how the great split came about, to the shame of the whole country.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

On the American South's switch from Democrat to Republican http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=342
2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

People , Family , Country

“If you want to avoid upsetting these people (Muslim fundamentalists) you have to let Indonesia commit genocide in East Timor, otherwise they'll be upset with you. You'll have made an enemy. If you tell them they can't throw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Karachi they will be annoyed with you. If you say we insist, we think that cartoonists in Copenhagen can print satire on the Prophet Muhammed you've just made an enemy. You've brought it on. You're encouraging it to happen. So unless you're willing to commit suicide for yourself and for this culture, get used to the compromises you'll have to make and the eventual capitulation that will come to you, but bloody well don't do that in my name…”

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

Speech at Freedom From Religion Foundation on 12 October 2007.
2000s, 2007

Women , People , Thinking , Suicide

“An untold time ago, there was a well-founded perception that the human race would end and that something else must take its place.
Why must something else take its place?
I cannot tell you that. There is no solid rationale for it, but the belief seemed to be that there must be a dominant race upon this planet. Before men were the dinosaurs and before the dinosaurs there were the trilobites…”

Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity

Highway of Eternity (1986)

Men , Time

“For, in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery: but in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.”

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

The Drapier's Letters, letter iv (13 October, 1724)

Men

“Well I'm afraid it simply does, um, [the Catholic Church] does condemn [homosexuality], yes, it calls it a - the official word is disorder, but it was refined by the current Pontiff, Ratzinger, who called it a 'moral evil'. But on the other hand we must remember, as the point that was made is that the church is very loose on moral evils because, although they try to accuse people like me who believe in the empiricism and the enlightenment of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it's some appalling sin where what it actually means is thought, um, they um, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine… absolutely okay, and then they didn't, and what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says 'oh well we couldn't know better because nobody else did?”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

(To the affirmative team) Then what are you for?!
Answering a question during the Intelligence² debate: "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world", November 7th 2009
2000s

People , Evil

“It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/184/mode/1up p. 184

Friendship , Hope , Parting

“Well it's Saturday night you're all dressed up in blue.
I been watching you awhile, maybe you been watching me too.
So somebody ran out, left somebody's heart in a mess.
Well if you're looking for love, honey I'm tougher than the rest.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Tougher Than the Rest"
Song lyrics, Tunnel Of Love (1987)

Love , Heart , Night

“But if nothing does as well as something about which nothing can be said, it vanishes.”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 173

“If you're a child of store owners, if you're brought up in a store, you learn good manners. You have to be genial, well-liked. You're not going to sell a customer if you're rude. You also get with different age groups, and different types of people. So be respectful. Being respectful is very important. You have to learn this.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

In an interview with David L. Ulin to Los Angeles Times - Gay Talese talks with David L. Ulin http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/10/gay-talese-talks-with-david-l-ulin.html (October 15, 2010)

People , Age , Learning

“Well I tried my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them”

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

Song lyrics, The Essential Bob Dylan (2000), Maggie's Farm

“A wonderful range of writing is offered in these and other forms. Stylistically, there are unspoken limits. The delphic or serpentine are not part of the repertoire. No fear could be more foreign to the journal than of ‘the mischief of premature clarification’, against which Fredric Jameson – whose arrival in its pages is a welcome departure from consistency – once warned. The too vehement is likewise at some discount, suspect of ‘rant’. Perhaps the best way of conveying the overall climate would be to say that the paper resists any trace of l’esprit du sérieux, in the Sartrean sense: that is, of the portentous, high-minded, hypocritical. Against all these, its playfulness finds expression on the largest as well as smallest of topics. Emblematic in this collection are the saturnine tones of Edward Luttwak, as a ‘heavy-weight’ contributor. 12 It is enough to think of the contributions of President Havel to the New York Review to understand their antithesis.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Debts 1. "The London Review of Books" (1996; 2005)
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Perry Anderson / Quotes / Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)
Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Debts 1. "The London Review of Books" (1996; 2005)

Parting , Fear , Departure , Thinking

“The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 3

“The simultaneousness of states of mind in the work of art: that is the intoxicating aim of our art... In the pictorial description of the various states of mind of a leave-taking, perpendicular lines, undulating lines and as it were worn out, clinging here and there to silhouettes of empty bodies, may well express languidness and discouragement. Confused and trepidating lines, either straight or curved, mingled with the outlined hurried gestures of people calling to one another will express a sensation of chaotic excitement. On the other hand, horizontal lines, fleeting, rapid and jerky, brutally cutting in half lost profiles of faces or crumbling and rebounding fragments of landscape, will give the tumultuous feelings of the person going away.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Source: 1912, Les exposants au public', 1912, pp. 47, 49

People , Art , Feeling , Personality

“Hume was right about one thing: to have real confidence in a miracle, one needs evidence—massive, well-documented, and either replicated or independently corroborated evidence from multiple and reliable sources. No religious miracle even comes close to meeting those standards.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 124

Confidence

“I would be harder, tougher. I would put myself about more. I should have mixed with more people which would have led to more opportunities. As I said, I had this sort of ‘keep away from me’ look, barrier, whatever, and I guess people might have thought I was snooty, which I wasn’t, but that was my way of just coping with things. Many stars come to sticky ends, so I think maybe it’s just as well. At least I am still here, for which I’m grateful.”

Valerie Leon (1943) English actress

The Den Of Geek Interview: Valerie Leon http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/13448/the-den-of-geek-interview-valerie-leon (July 7, 2008)

People , Way , Star , Thinking

“There is no rivalry, no competition to get employment among slaves, as among free laborers. Nor is there a war between master and slave… His feeling for his slave never permits him to stint him in old age. The slaves are all well fed, well clad, have plenty of fuel, and are happy. They have no dread of the future—no fear of want. A state of dependence is the only condition in which reciprocal affection can exist among human beings—the only situation in which the war of competition ceases, and peace, amity and good will arise. A state of independence always begets more or less of jealous rivalry and hostility. A man loves his children because they are weak, helpless and dependent; he loves his wife for similar reasons.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), pp. 246-247

Love , Hostility , War , Children

“If Imus had called me a "towheaded ho" or Al Sharpton a "nappy-headed ho," it would be what's known as "funny." (And if he called Anna Nicole Smith a "flaxen-headed ho," it would be "absolutely accurate.") But he attacked the looks and morals of utterly innocent women, who had done nothing to inject themselves into public debate.
Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton's ring.
This wasn't an insult to all mankind, and certainly not an insult to Al Sharpton. Now, if Imus had called the basketball players "fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles," well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Ho Ho Ho, Merry Imus!" (11 April 2007).
2007

Women , Men , Flowers , Kiss

“Wowers never speede well, that have a false harte.”

Nicholas Udall Ralph Roister Doister

Mathew Merygreeke, Act I, sc. ii.
Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1553)

Speed , Falseness

“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representatives of the King-Emperor. Such a spectacle can only increase the unrest in India and the danger to which white people there are exposed. It can only encourage all the forces which are hostile to British authority.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Council of the West Essex Conservative Association (23 February 1931) on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 390
The 1930s

Hostility , People

“Let Massachusetts continue to regard with the greatest solicitude the well-being of her people. By prescribed law, by authorized publicity, by informed public opinion, let her continue to strive to provide that all conditions under which her citizens live are worthy of the highest faith of man. Healthful housing, wholesome food, sanitary working conditions, reasonable hours, a fair wage for a fair day's work, opportunity — full and free, justice — speedy and impartial, and at a cost within the reach of all, are among the objects not only to be sought, but made absolutely certain and secure.”

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

1920s, Law and Order (1920)

People , Health , Faith , Justice

“And Vache believes that the she-bear is not only his mother, but that of all the people on this earth. This is what grandpa and Kukubo said. Javria looks like nature and she is nature herself. The maker of this world, our Saviour, if he is grand and omnipotent will not allow the killing of this bear. Baido will be left disappointed. God will take the straw coloured bear with his strong, muscled right hand and turn her into the constellation. He took Dali to heaven as well.”

Miho Mosulishvili book A Big She-Bear

Source: A Big She-Bear (2013), p. 67

God , People , World , Disappointment

“Bright-minded young people think poorly of existing institutions and want to abolish them. Well, one doesn't need to be young to dislike institutions. But the dreary fact remains that, even in the darkest ages, it was institutions that made society work, and if civilisation is to survive society must somehow be made to work.At this point I reveal myself in my true colours, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism

Men , People , Age , History

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Women , Men , War , Children

“Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 4

“FOG: Fog covers this region. / Can you still hear my voice? / I don't understand trees. / They try to grab our hair. / A branch has fallen on you. I know that. / Could you look behind me: / is there a load / on my back, as well?”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Understanding , Tree

“Punk: I'm not gonna have you sit here and belittle me. Say I've lost sight? I've lost sight of things, John? The reason I say I'm gonna take that and walk out is because I don't fit a certain mold. Because I am the underdog, and that's exactly what you've lost sight of. Earlier in this ring, you mentioned great wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero and you said they used to look at you and say that the kid couldn't hang. And now you stand here and look at me as the kid that can't hang. John, I was hanging off of your gangster car, WrestleMania 22, as it rolled down in Chicago, Illinois, and I stood there in a suit looking as ridiculous as [points to Vince McMahon] that man looks right now in his suit, holding a phony Tommy gun, and I said to myself someday, I'm not gonna be standing out there watching you in the ring; I was gonna be in the ring watching you go down to CM Punk. And now here we are in your hometown of Boston. And now next week, we'll be back there in my hometown—Chicago, Illinois. And this… this is the part where I talk 'em into the building. See, you are the one that's lost sight, and I apologize for raising my voice because I'm not that guy. But when you stand here and tell me that I've lost sight, when you, the 10-time Champion who stands for hustle, loyalty and respect; who, from Boston, Massachusetts, lives and breathes these red colors, the same colors as your beloved Red Sox, who also portray themselves as the underdog, I'm sure just like the Bruins portray themselves as the underdog. Just like the Patriots think they're the underdog! Hey, how about those Celtics? Are they the underdogs too? Here's what you've lost sight of, John, and I'm really happy that your father and your wife are sitting in the front row so they can hear it!
John Cena: That's the last time I'm gonna tell you, man, ease up.
Punk: What you've lost sight of is what you are, and what you are is what you hate. You're the 10-time WWE Champion! You're the man! You, like the Red Sox, like Boston, are no longer the underdog! You're a dynasty. You are what you hate. You have become the New York Yankees! [John immediately punches Punk, who scoots out of the ring, grabs the contract, and goes up the ramp. Points respectively to Vince and John] You're Steinbrenner, and you might as well be Jeter! Mr. 3000, I'm the underdog! [John's music plays for fourteen seconds] Turn it off! Turn the music off because I have something to say, and I'm positive that everybody here wants to hear it, and everybody sitting at home has their DVRs fired up because they wanna hear it! I'm glad you just punched me in the face, John. I'm glad it went down this way because it hit me like a bolt of lightning—exactly why I no longer wanna be here, why I wanna leave. It's because I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you. I'm just tired. So ladies and gentlemen of the WWE Universe, Vince, John, Sunday night, say goodbye to the WWE Title, say goodbye to John Cena, and say goodbye to CM Punk! [Rips up the contract] I'll go be the best in the world somewhere else.”

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

July 11, 2011
WWE Raw

Hate , World , Music , Cars

“There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Preface
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Hell , Thinking

“When a man goes thirsty to the well, his thirst is not allayed by merely going there. On the contrary, it is increased by every step he goes. It is by what he draws out of the well that his thirst is satisfied. And just so it is not by the mere bodily exercise of waiting upon ordinances that you will ever come to peace, but by tasting of Jesus in the ordinances, whose flesh is meat indeed, and His blood drink indeed.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 153.

Peace , Exercises , Drink , Waiting

“I thought that, that side of [Rudd's] character – the very anxious, 'I must be in the media, I must shine in Parliament today' – would fall away when he became Labor leader and there was no more fighting for the spotlight; the spotlight was well and truly on him.”

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

The Killing Season, Episode one: The Prime Minister and his Loyal Deputy (2006–09)

Fight

“Some of the pictures I work on a long time and they look as if I've knocked them out, you know, and there are other pictures that come off right away. The immediacy can be accomplished in a picture that's been worked on for a long time just as well as if it's been done rapidly, you see. But I don't find that any of these things prove anything really.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

n.p.
1960's, Living Art, 1963

Time

“We can now return to the NCERT guideline which proclaims that the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in medieval India shall be regarded as political rather than religious. There is no justification for such a characterisation of the conflict. The Muslims at least were convinced that they were waging a religious war against the Hindu infidels. The conflict can be regarded as political only if the NCERT accepts the very valid proposition that Islam has never been a religion, and that it started and has remained a political ideology of terrorism with unmistakable totalitarian trends and imperialist ambitions. The first premises as well as the procedures of Islam bear a very close resemblance to those of Communism and Nazism. Allah is only the predecessor of the Forces of Production invoked by the Communists, and of the Aryan Race invoked by the Nazis.
My heart sinks at the very idea of such a sinister scheme being sponsored by an educational agency set up by the government of a democratic country. It is an insidious attempt at thought-control and brainwashing. Having been a student of these processes in Communist countries, I have a strong suspicion that this document has also sprung from the same sort of mind. This mind has presided for long over the University Grants Commission and other educational institutions, and has been aided and abetted by the residues of Islamic imperialism masquerading as secularists.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

War , Education , Religion , Communication

“Language is an abominable misunderstanding which makes up a part of matter. The painters and the physicists have treated matter pretty well. The poets have hardly touched it. In March 1958, when I was living at the Beat Hotel, I proposed to Burroughs to at least make available to literature the means that painters have been using for fifty years. Cut words into pieces and scramble them. You'll hear someone draw a bow-string. Who runs may read, To read better, practice your running. Speed is entirely up to us, since machines have delivered us from the horse. Henceforth the question is to deliver us from that other so-called superior animal, man. It's not worth it to chase out the merchants: their temple is dedicated to the unsuitable lie of the value of the Unique. The crime of separation gave birth to the idea of the Unique which would not be separate. In painting, matter has seen everything: from sand to stuffed goats. Disfigured more and more, the image has been geometrically multiplied to a dizzying degree. A snow of advertising could fall from the sky, and only collector babies and the chimpanzees who make abstract paintings would bother to pick one up.”

Brion Gysin (1916–1986) Canadian artist

Cut-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success.

Lie , Literature , Idea , Birth

“'The main argument for the term "open source software" is that "free software" makes some people uneasy. That's true: talking about freedom, about ethical issues, about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might rather ignore. This can trigger discomfort, and some people may reject the idea for that. It does not follow that society would be better off if we stop talking about these things.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)

People , Idea , Thinking , Freedom

“In spite of the many valuable books available today, the state of Prokofiev scholarship cannot be considered adequate: suffice it to say that the detailed catalogue of his works has not been updated since it was published in 1961. At present, there is no edition of the Prokofiev sonatas free of errors. I have tried to do my best in pointing out some obvious mistakes, as well as certain doubtful readings. Many questions cannot be answered with certainty, as the manuscripts for some of the sonatas have been lost; those that have survived are not easily available for inspection. To get to some of them, I was fortunate to have the help of Russian colleagues in overcoming the restrictions of the current gatekeepers in Russia.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Preface

Books , Error , Question , Reading

“It is problematic to imagine yourself in the shoes of a criminal and conclude, “Well, I wouldn’t have done that”—because if you weren’t exposed to in utero cocaine, lead poisoning, or physical abuse, and he was, then you don’t fit in his shoes. Even if you would like to imagine what it’s like to be him, you won’t be very good at it.”

David Eagleman (1971) neuroscientist and author

Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain

Shoe , Imagination

“This painting, this work you miss so much [the two sisters Morisot painted a lot together] is a cause of much trouble and concern, you know this as well as I do and yet, child that you are, you are already weeping for the loss of the very thing that darkened you mood only recently. Think of it, yours is not the very worst lot: you have a real affection, a devoted heart that is yours an yours alone, do not be ungrateful for the dealings of fate, think of the great sorrow that is solitude; whatever anyone says or does, womankind has immense need of affection; to want to retreat into yourself is to attempt the impossible.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

in Berthe's letter to her sister Edma, c. 1870; as cited in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, ed. Denis Rouart; Camden, London 1986 / Kinston, R. I. Moyer Bell, 1989, p. 29
1860 - 1870

Fate , Mood , Thinking , Solitude

“What makes the Nightmares on Elm Street universal and forever in their attraction, I think, is simply the dream. The landscape of the mind, the subconscious, the nightmare. Everybody has a nightmare, and everybody apparently has falling dreams, and everybody has the drowning dream, and everybody has certain kinds of sexual manifestation dreams, as well as our stress dreams; I didn’t study for the algebra test, I didn’t study for my driving test, you know, all those dreams. I still have those dreams, and it’s just such an interesting thing that our mind can turn against us, our own mind, you know we all have.”

Robert Englund (1947) American actor, voice-actor, singer, and director

Robert Englund On El Rey’s 45 Hour ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ Marathon, the Passing of Wes Craven, and the Current State of the Slasher Genre http://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3379567/3379567/ (February 12, 2016)

Dreams , Thinking , Study , Universe

“The Seventh Men were completely without interest in the universal and the unseen. The beauty which they sought to create was ephemeral and very largely sensuous. And they were well content that it should be so. Personal immortality, said a dying sage, would be as tedious as an endless song.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter XIII: Humanity on Venus; Section 2, “The Flying Men” (p. 199)

Men , Beauty , Universe , Personality

“Let us say thus in our thinking: I know well I have a shrewd pain; but our Lord is All-Mighty and may punish me mightily; and He is All-Wisdom and can punish me discerningly; and He is all-Goodness and loveth me full tenderly. And in this beholding it is necessary for us to abide; for it is a lovely meekness of a sinful soul, wrought by mercy and grace of the Holy Ghost, when we willingly and gladly take the scourge and chastening of our Lord that Himself will give us. And it shall be full tender and full easy, if that we will only hold us satisfied with Him and with all His works.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 77

Love , Wisdom , Pain , Soul

“It was sad but completely understandable. Ten billion human beings without any cortical or limbic augmentation had simply acted to maximize their individual well-being. They hadn’t given much thought to long-term consequences, but how could they? They had no reliable mechanism by which they could think or act collectively. Blaming those people for the death of the ecosphere made as much sense as blaming water molecules for a tsunami.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Vortex

Source: Vortex (2011), Chapter 10 (pp. 126-127)

Death , People , Sadness , Understanding

“If there is a god, why did he make me an atheist? That was his first mistake. Well, the talking snake was his first mistake.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

"Inside the Actors Studio," 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBBtYcK9Jb8

God

“A western scholar must de-europeanize himself, and, in view of the most universal use of English, an Englishman must de-Anglicize himself as well.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

J. R. Firth, (1956). "Descriptive linguistics and the study of english." in: F.R. Palmer (ed.), Selected Papers of J.R. Firth, Indiana University Press, p. 96; As cited in: Angela Senis (2016)

Universe

“It seems to me from my experience where I have been in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with the white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the Clinic he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results among the colored people. His work in my opinion should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County’s white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

People , Color , Knowledge , Success

“Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (the whole peninsula of Indochina) present a puzzling picture, enigmatic to most foreigners and especially so to Americans. The very name Vietnam evokes deep emotions and bitter memories in our countrymen. But the tendency to blame Vietnam for our domestic ills has no foundation in fact. The problems of urban decay, racial disharmony, drug abuse, and all the rest were bound to plague us, whether or not we became involved in Vietnam. Indeed, one can argue that in the 1950s, well before we became heavily involved in Vietnam, a sense of national direction and purpose appeared to be lacking in the United States. This book looks at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a senior military professional who held important positions of responsibility during the conflict. Among other things, I will seek to bring out the lessons we have learned or should have learned from the war, and their implications for the future. The severe impact of the war on our armed forces and its almost disastrous effect on the U. S. Army will receive special treatment.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. vii-viii

War , Books , Problem , Sense

“I know so well the look on your face
And there's somethin' lucky about this place
There's somethin' good comin'
Just over the hill
Somethin' good comin'
I know it will

And I'm in for the long run
Wherever it goes
Ridin' the river
Wherever it goes.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

"Something Good Coming"
Lyrics, Mojo (2010)

“The biggest fool in the world is he who merely does his work supremely well, without attending to appearance.”

Michael Korda (1933) British writer

As quoted in Quote Unquote (A Handbook of Quotations) (2005) by M. P. Singh, p. 141

World , Fools , Appearance

“If only I could have a dozen churchmen as wise and as well taught in all human knowledge as were Jerome and Augustine!”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Notker the Stammerer De Carolo Magno, Bk. 1, sect. 9; translation from Einhard and Notker the Stammerer (trans. Lewis Thorpe) Two Lives of Charlemagne (1969) p. 102.; O utinam haberem duodecim clericos ita doctos, omnique sapientia sic perfecte instructos, ut fuerunt Hieronimus et Augustinus. In conversation with his minister Alcuin, who replied, "Creator coeli et terrae similes illis plures non habuit, et tu vis habere duodecim (The Maker of heaven and earth Himself has very few scholars worth comparing with these men, and yet you expect to find a dozen!)".

Knowledge

“We saw the choices. The audience will be given the opportunity. They can see Him and Her, or they can see Them. … Well, for the cinephiles and the people who really want to commit, I would definitely say, “See Him and Her.” It’s the full experience. … I’ve always thought Him and Her. But it’s funny, in Toronto, when Harvey Weinstein saw the film for the first time, he saw Her and Him, and he was determined. He was like, “That’s how it has to be seen!””

Jessica Chastain (1977) American actress

So it depends.
On her role in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2013-2014), written and directed by Ned Benson
Vulture interview (2014)

People , Time , Dependency

“I see and understand both the symbolic as well as the substantive elements of my life. Sometimes I visualise it as a journey of an individual from a remote village on the sidelines of society to the hub of social standing. But at the same time I also realise that my life encapsulates the ability of the democratic system to accommodate and empower marginalised sections of society.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Source: Venkitesh Ramakrishnan Citizen President K.R. Narayanan, 1920-2005 http://www.frontline.in/navigation/type=static&page=flonnet&rdurl=fl2224/stories/20051202005012500.htm, Frontline

Life , Understanding , Time

“UKIP’s main cause is taking on the establishment, and we’ve done it very well. We’ve turned the Conservative party more human than they used to be. They’re the party of big business and they don’t care very much about the people, but they’ve had to show they care about the people now. Similarly the Labour party are the party of the town hall bureaucrat, and their large pensions and large salaries. Now they’ve had to listen to the people.”

David Coburn (politician) (1959) British politician

Interview: What UKIP’s David Coburn wants for Kirkcaldy https://www.fifetoday.co.uk/news/politics/interview-what-ukip-s-david-coburn-wants-for-kirkcaldy-1-4449642 (May 18, 2017)

People , Business

“(Eating meat) is really on the same moral level as child abuse. It’s the same thing. Animals are like children, they look to us for protection. We should protect them. I really feel quite smug about mad cow disease and foot and mouth and so forth, and I just think ‘Well, what do you expect? People have been saying it for years.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From the TV documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey (2003)
In interviews etc., About vegetarianism and animals

Children , People , Disease , Feeling

“What I declare and believe to have demonstrated in this work as well as in earlier papers is that following the finite there is a transfinite (transfinitum)--which might also be called supra-finite (suprafinitum), that is, there is an unlimited ascending ladder of modes, which in its nature is not finite but infinite, but which can be determined as can the finite by determinate, well-defined and distinguishable numbers.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

From Kant to Hilbert (1996)

Nature

“The word addiction is used far too liberally in our society and I shy away from it. If I have any addiction, it would be nicotine. I would say alcohol is more of a compulsive habit for me. I have used different narcotics for roughly 20 years and I have always used them socially, sporadically and usually sparingly. I use cocaine occasionally and sometimes medicinally - before a third show Saturday, a bump of coke can make the difference between a strong performance and just phoning it in - and I've never developed any type of habit, never craved it the next day. I will use hallucinogens a few times a year as well, always in a safe environment. So far as an "early grave," I'm more concerned with quality of life. No sense in having a mint condition classic car if you're afraid to take it out of the garage. I look as sadly at people awash in hand-sanitizer and surgical masks in elevators as they might see me when I'm pouring booze down my head on stage.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

On his drug use. Doug Stanhope interview http://markprindle.com/stanhope-i.htm, MarkPrindle.com, 2007
Miscellaneous

Life , People , Alcohol , Cars

“Who God doth late and early pray,
More of his grace than gifts to send,
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.”

Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador

The Character of a Happy Life (1614), stanza 5.

God , Books

“It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s 1930 Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, 29 December 1930 (from University of Columbia website http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_1930.html)

Life , People , History , Animals

“Brighton, 25 June 1965: “All at once came the thought – If you are simply obeying the LORD, all the responsibility will rest on Him, not on you! What a relief!! Well, I cried to God – You shall be responsible for them, and for me too!””

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Three: If I Had a Thousand Lives. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1982, 454).

God

“Prentice: What this young woman claims is a tissue of lies.
Match: This is a boy, sir. Not a girl. If you're baffled by the difference it might be as well to approach both with caution.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act II

Girl , Boy

“… well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can think for you. Consequently, even if a tool did everything except the thinking for you – if it wrote 100 percent of the code, wrote 100 percent of the documentation, did 100 percent of the testing, burned the CD-ROMs, put them in boxes, and mailed them to your customers – the best you could hope for would be a 30 percent improvement in productivity. In order to do better than that, you have to change the way you think.”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

As quoted [paraphrased] from * http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-1999/jw-07-toolbox.html
Java World
1999
July
Toolbox

Hope , Way , Thinking , Change

“I valued my independence from an early age and was always something of a individualist … Well, a show-off anyway.”

Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980) American writer and prominent socialite

As quoted in "The Doyenne of the Drawing Room" in The New York Times (23 August 1981) http://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/books/the-doyenne-of-the-drawing-room.html?sec=&pagewanted=all.

Age

“As an actor… we all have our own methods and approaches to creating a character, whether that's from the inside going in or vice versa. I spoke, mainly, to the executive producer Bill Dozier. We got along very well and we really shared the same ideas about the show, what it could and should be. We knew to play it on several levels - something that could be lasting for the children but also with funny, social satire for the adults.”

Adam West (1928–2017) American actor

"Adam West interview: on being Batman" http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/batman/241310/adam-west-interview-on-being-batman by Brendon Connelly, Den of Geek, (November 14, 2014)

Children , Idea

“The whole evil of commercial prostitution arises out of the domination of Man in matters of sex. Better indeed were a Saturnalia of free men and women than the spectacle which as it is our great cities present at night. Here in sex, the women's instincts are, as a rule, so clean, so direct, so well-rooted in the needs of the race, that except for man's domination they would scarcely have suffered this perversion.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Love's Coming of Age (1896)

Women , Men , Sex , Suffering

“Well, I looked at Picasso [at the Picasso exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, in 1939] until I could smell his armpits and the cigarette smoke on his breast. Finally, in front of one picture – a bone figure on a beach – I got it. I saw that the figure was not his real subject. The plasticity wasn't either – although the plasticity was great. No. Picasso had uncovered a feverishness in himself and is painting it – a feverishness of death and beauty.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

Modern Art U.S.A., R. Blesh, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1956, pp. 268-69
1950s

Death , Beauty , Art , Painting

“Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper circling round
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.
Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declar'd how much he knew,
'T was certain he could write and cipher too.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Variant: A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the bust whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too.
Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 199.

Love , Business , Learning

“I'm for limited government, so stay out of my guns, and you can stay out of my body as well.”

Tomi Lahren (1992) American television and online video host

Stated on The View, as quoted by Elizabeth Nolan Brown in " Tomi Lahren, Pro-Choice Conservative, Not 'Incoherent' on Abortion https://reason.com/blog/2017/03/20/tomi-lauren-isnt-incoherent-on-abortion," Hit & Run Blog (Reason magazine, 20 March 2017).

“Well, as soon as he [Trump] travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease fire, the release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends eleven hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

World , Peace , Travel , Country

“I have no breaking point, and all you have to do is look in my eyes and realize I have laughed in the face of temptation time and time again. I have never tapped out to society's attempts at peer pressure. You try to stick a beer in my hand with the same commercials that have hypnotized all of you people, and that sell you all your narcotics and things you're addicted to. Well, I'm harder than any alcohol you can drink, I'm straighter than any line you can snort up your nose, and I certainly can hurt you a lot faster than any pill you put on your tongue.”

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

September 4, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

People , Alcohol , Drink , Beer

“All I can say is that I am well. I have the enemy closely hemmed in all round. My position is naturally strong and fortified against an attack from outside. I have been so strongly reinforced that Johnston will have to come with a mighty host to drive me away. I do not look upon the fall of Vicksburg as in the least doubtful. If, however, I could have carried the place on the 22nd of last month, I could by this time have made a campaign that would have made the State of Mississippi almost safe for a solitary horseman to ride over. As it is, the enemy have a large army in it, and the season has so far advanced that water will be difficult to find for an army marching, besides the dust and heat that must be encountered. The fall of Vicksburg now will only result in the opening of the Mississippi River and demoralization of the enemy. I intended more from it. I did my best, however, and looking back can see no blunder committed.”

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

Letter http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/us-grants-letter-to-his-1.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ to Jesse Root Grant (15 June 1863), Vicksburg
1860s

Nature , Strong , Water , Time

“People, especially liberals and psychiatrists, say that the two main causes of crime are mental illness and poverty. Insanity is therefore a defense in the criminal law. If we really believed that poverty caused crime, we would have a "poverty defense" as well, attorneys calling professors of economics to testify in court whether a particular defendant is guilty of theft or not by reason of poverty.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary (1990)

People , Law

“Programming languages on the whole are very much more complicated than they used to be: object orientation, inheritance, and other features are still not really being thought through from the point of view of a coherent and scientifically well-based discipline or a theory of correctness. My original postulate, which I have been pursuing as a scientist all my life, is that one uses the criteria of correctness as a means of converging on a decent programming language design—one which doesn’t set traps for its users, and ones in which the different components of the program correspond clearly to different components of its specification, so you can reason compositionally about it. […] The tools, including the compiler, have to be based on some theory of what it means to write a correct program.”

C. A. R. Hoare (1934) British computer scientist

Oral history interview http://hdl.handle.net/11299/107362 by Philip L. Frana, 17 July 2002, Cambridge, England; Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

Life

“The Man Comes Around" is a song that I wrote, it's my song of the apocalypse, and I got the idea from a dream that I had — I dreamed I saw Queen Elizabeth. I dreamed I went in to Buckingham Palace, and there she sat on the floor. And she looked up at me and said, "Johnny Cash, you're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." And I woke up, of course, and I thought, what could a dream like this mean? Thorn tree in a whirlwind? Well, I forgot about it for two or three years, but it kept haunting me, this dream. I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it's biblical. So I found it. Something about whirlwinds and thorn trees in the Bible. So from that, my song started and… "The Man Comes Around.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

The song turned out to be "The Man Comes Around."
CNN interview (2002)

Dreams , Idea , Thinking , Tree

“O Kunti, grant me some more offspring for the expansion of my race and for the benefit of the world. O blessed one, provide thou that I myself, my ancestors, and thine also, may always have the funeral cake offered to us. O, do what is beneficial to me, and grant me and the world what, indeed, is the best of benefits. O, do what, indeed, may be difficult for thee, moved by the desire of achieving undying fame. Behold, Indra, even though he hath obtained the sovereignty of the celestials, doth yet, for fame alone, perform sacrifices. O handsome one, Brahmanas, well-acquainted with the Vedas, and having achieved high ascetic merit, do yet, for fame alone, approach their spiritual masters with reverence. So also all royal sages and Brahmanas possessed of ascetic wealth have achieved, for fame only, the most difficult of ascetic feat. Therefore, O blameless one, rescue this Madri as by a raft (by granting her the means of obtaining offspring), and achieve thou imperishable fame by making her a mother of children.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Pandu requesting Kunti to help Madri.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIV

Children , World , Wealth

“The Samaritans (whose beginnings were pre-Josianic) have a Pentateuch quite similar to the familiar Jewish Pentateuch. …our Pentateuchal text was fairly well established before the rift between the Samaritans and Judeans.”

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

“The exploits of your leaders in many a historic field of battle; the progress of your Revolution; the rise and career of the great Atatürk, his revitalization of your nation by his great statesmanship, courage and foresight all these stirring events are well-known to the people of Pakistan.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Reply to the speech made by the first Turkish Ambassador to Pakistan at the time of presenting Credentials to the Quaid-i-Azam (4 March 1948)

People , Courage

“… as a matter of fact it is nice to paint a happy picture after a sad one. I think there is a kind of loneliness in a lot of them which I don't think about as the fact that I'm lonely and therefore I paint lonely pictures, but I like kind of lonely things anyhow; so if the forms express that to me, there is a certain excitement that I have about that.... What I try to do is to create the painting so that the overall thing has the particular emotion; not just the forms in it.... in other words, there's a particular static or heavy form that can have a look to it, an experience that translated through the form; so then it does have a mood. And when that is there, well then it becomes it becomes a painting whereas all the other pictures that have far more interesting shapes and so on, don't become that to me.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

n.p.
1960's, Living Art, 1963

Sadness , Mood , Thinking , Painting

“Snatch them baldheaded, slap their teeth out. Little starved faces four feet from the screen, you’d speak to them in a loud, commanding voice, get not even a twitch. Use of the preemptive splint, not everyone knows about it. The world reminds us of its power, again and again and again. Going along minding your own business, and suddenly an act of God, right there in front of you. Great falls of snow and bursting birds. Getting guilty, letting it all slide. Sown here and there like little…petunias, one planted in Old Lyme, one in Fairbanks, one in Tempe. Alleged that he slept with her while she was asleep, I can see it, under certain circumstances. You may wink, but not at another person. You may wink only at pigeons. You may pound in your tent pegs, pitch your tent, gather wood for the fire, form the hush puppies. They seek to return? Back to the nest? The warm arms? The ineffable smells? Not on your tintype. Well, I think that’s a little harsh. Think that’s a little harsh do you? Yes, harsh. Harsh. Well that’s a sketch, that is, that’s a tin-plated sketch— They write and telephone. Short of cash? Give us a call, all inquiries handled with the utmost confidentiality. They call constantly, they’re calling still, saying williwaw, williwaw”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

God , World , Business , Bird

“They would receive the same care and attention as those who belong to the establishment. Nor will there be any distinction made between the children of those parents who are deemed the worst, and of those who may be esteemed the best members of society: indeed I would prefer to receive the offspring of the worst, if they shall be sent at an early age; because they really require more of our care and pity and by well-training these, society will be more essentially benefited than if the like attention were paid to those whose parents are educating them in comparatively good habits.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

On educating children of the poor, and of neighboring communities.
Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark (1816)

Children , Age , Education , Parent

“I know this is the question period, but there’s a quote here which is just so relevant. I hope I can — I hope I can read it. It’s from an article by, uh, Yossi Klein Halevi on Pesach Jews versus Purim Jews. So he talks about these — there’s these two threads, these two strands among — among — among Jews in — actually, there’s more in Israel. But it’s here, too. So he — I just love this, and it fits so well with — with — with The Righteous Mind. He says, uh, Jewish history speaks to our generation in the voice of two Biblical commands to remember.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

"The Psychology Behind Morality" (12 June 2014) http://www.onbeing.org/program/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-behind-morality/transcript/6347#main_content

Love , Hope , Quotes , History

“People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Speech in Boston (2002)

God , People , World , Universe

“I am well aware that the path of the biographer is beset with pitfalls, and that, for him, suppressio veri is almost necessarily suggestio falsi — the least omission may distort the whole picture.”

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1870–1937) English clergyman, headmaster, author

The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. ix.

“The House of Peers, thoughout the war
Did nothing in particular
And did it very well.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Iolanthe (1882)

War , Housing

“I'm not going to do just nothing anymore."
"You mean never again?"
"Well, not so much. They don't let you.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

The House at Pooh Corner (1928)

“Our debt to Hayek is very substantial. He helped to establish a freedom-based approach of evaluation through which economic systems can be judged (no matter what substantive judgments we arrive at). He pointed to the importance of identifying those services that the state can perform well and has a social duty to undertake. Finally, he showed why administrative psychology and propensities to corruptibility have to be considered in determining how states can, or cannot, work and how the world can, or cannot, be run.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

"An insight into the purpose of prosperity", Financial Times (September 20, 2004)
2000s, "An insight into the purpose of prosperity," 2004

World , Freedom , Help

“Perhaps the single most valuable contribution of feminism has been the way it has chipped away at men's fantasies about women. Today it is the destructive woman, consciously or unconsciously intent on controlling, manipulating and exploiting men, who feeds on his regressive, pathetic desire to see himself as the dominant superman. … This hostile attitude was well expressed by one woman who responded with the following comment to a survey on attitudes and experiences regarding the roles of men and women in our society. She wrote:"[If men learn that women are superior] we'll be stuck with a lot of sniveling little boys clinging to our skirts. It's better to let them think they're king of the castle, lean and depend on them, and continue to control and manipulate them as we always have."A man is in jeopardy if he fails to realize that the "fragile," "passive" women of today is not "feminine" but repressed, and may well emerge as the angry woman of tomorrow who will turn the tables on him at a time when he may hardly be prepared or equipped to adapt to the changes. Such is the price of refusing to recognize what is.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

He and His Changes, pp. 188–189
The New Male (1979)

Women , Men , Hostility , Way

“Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed … Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.”

Philip K. Dick book A Maze of Death

A Maze of Death (1970)

Youth , Age , Time

“And then [after the break with Clem [Greenberg], c. 1955] I investigated something which is related to what I talked about in 'Number 14', [of Jackson] Pollock, a side of me that --.... Well, I always use this word and I'm always dissatisfied with it because it's not what I mean at all, but a 'surreal' side. There are two words that are applied to me often that I think are very wrong but there aren't any other words that I can think of at the moment that would --. But one is 'lyrical' and the other is 'surreal'.... I understand what's meant when that word [lyrical] is used in relation to my pictures. And I don't think 'lyric' is a put down but 'lyric' never implies the profound enough.... In other words, 'lyric' can imply light, untouched, angelic, witty. Which are marvelous qualities. But 'light' can also imply simple, which is not a marvelous quality. I don't know..”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about 'surreal' / 'lyrical', after 1955
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Angels , Understanding , Thinking , Light

“Politics is not my life. I have a career in radio and another career in film. I have a wife who is the sweetest person in the world and two kids who are growing up into terrific, well-rounded people. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in politics. When I'm finished with my term as governor, I'm going back to the life that's waiting for me in the private sector.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)

Life , People , World , Waiting

“Back at the Philadelphia Worldcon (which seems a million years ago), I announced the famous five-year gap: I was going to skip five years forward in the story, to allow some of the younger characters to grow older and the dragons to grow larger, and for various other reasons. I started out writing on that basis in 2001, and it worked very well for some of my myriad characters but not at all for others, because you can't just have nothing happen for five years. If things do happen you have to write flashbacks, a lot of internal retrospection, and that's not a good way to present it. I struggled with that essentially wrong direction for about a year before finally throwing it out, realizing there had to be another interim book. That became A Feast for Crows, where the action is pretty much continuous from the preceding book. Even so, that only accounts for one year. Why the four after that? I don't know, except that this was a very tough book to write -- and it remains so, because I've only finished half. Going in, I thought I could do something about the length of the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, roughly 1,200 pages in manuscript. But I passed that and there was a lot more to write. Then I passed the length of the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was something like 1,500 pages in manuscript and gave my publishers all around the world lots of production problems. I didn't really want to make any cuts because I had this huge story to tell. We started thinking about dividing it in two and doing it as A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two, but the more I thought about that the more I really did not like it. Part One would have had no resolution whatsoever for 18 viewpoint characters and their 18 stories. Of course this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview with Locus magazine (November 2005)

Books , World , Way , Problem

“Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily…”

Wilhelm Reich book Listen, Little Man!

Listen, Little Man! (1948)

Life , Soul , Time , Heart

“We might as well have a cup of tea,’ he said, and we noisily marched over the hollow boards of the glass-covered bridge, down the stairs to Platform Four. We entered the filthy Gothic tea-room and Everett ordered. The serving-woman served us with tired distain; she treated her customers like a dull and endless film that could only, with order and money, make a very rare stereoscopic contact with her real though duller world. Everett took me to a table and began to talk sadly but eagerly.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Money , World , Tea

“I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now… And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak…" And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

Love , Life , Women , Men

“Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
All this we owe both to ourselves and to the peoples of the world who are so well represented here today.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Inaugural celebration address (1994)

Life , People , World , Justice

“In another place in Kashmeer was a temple built by Raja Bulnat, the destruction of which was attended with a remarkable incident. After it had been levelled, and the people were employed in digging the foundation, a copper-plate was discovered, on which was the following inscription : —
“ Raja Bulnat, having built this temple, was
“ desirous of ascertaining from his astrologers
“ how long it would last, and was informed by
“ them, that after eleven hundred years, a king
“ named Sikundur would destroy it, as well as the
“ other temples in Kaslimeer.”
The King was surprised, though vexed, that the Hindoo prophet should have predicted the truth, and declared, if they had placed the plate against the wall, he would have preserved the temple to belie the prophet. Having broken all the images in Kashmeer, he acquired the title of the Iconoclast, “Destroyer of Idols.””

Sikandar Butshikan

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. III p.268-69

People , Truth

Quotes about well page 75

Quotes about well
page 75