Quotes about well
page 78

Hillary Clinton photo

“I'm so grateful this day has ended well.”

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

In response to the closure of the Campaign office hostage crisis. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/01/whostage101.xml
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

E. B. White photo
John Angell James photo

“I once asked Bell whether during the years he was studying the quantum theory it ever occurred to him that the theory might simply be wrong. He thought a moment and answered, “I hesitated to think it might be wrong, but I knew that it was rotten.” Bell pronounced the word “rotten” with a good deal of relish and then added, “That is to say, one has to find some decent way of expressing whatever truth there is in it.” The attitude that even if there is not something actually wrong with the theory, there is something deeply unsettling—“rotten”—about it, was common to most of the creators of the quantum theory. Niels Bohr was reported to have remarked, “Well, I think that if a man says it is completely clear to him these days, then he has not really understood the subject.” He later added, “If you do not getschwindlig [dizzy] sometimes when you think about these things then you have not really understood it.” My teacher Philipp Frank used to tell about the time he visited Einstein in Prague in 1911. Einstein had an office at the university that over looked a park. People were milling around in the park, some engaged in vehement gesture-filled discussions. When Professor Frank asked Einstein what was going on, Einstein replied that it was the grounds of a lunatic asylum, adding, “Those are the madmen who do not occupy themselves with the quantum theory.””

Jeremy Bernstein (1929) American physicist

Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer

Harry Turtledove photo

“A fellow with a great voice shouted, "Hearken now to the words of the President of the Confederate States of America, the honorable Woodrow Wilson." The president turned this way and that, surveying the great swarm of people all around him in the moment of silence the volley had brought. Then, swinging back to face the statue of George Washington- and, incidentally, Reginald Bartlett- he said, "The father of our country warned us against entangling alliances, a warning that served us well when we were yoked to the North, before its arrogance created in our Confederacy what had never existed before- a national consciousness. That was our salvation and our birth as a free and independent country." Silence broke then, with a thunderous outpouring of applause. Wilson raised a bony right hand. Slowly, silence, of a semblance of it, returned. The president went on, "But our birth of national consciousness made the United States jealous, and they tried to beat us down. We found loyal friends in England and France. Can we now stand aside when the German tyrant threatens to grind them under his iron heel?" "No!" Bartlett shouted himself hoarse, along with thousands of his countrymen. Stunned, deafened, he had trouble hearing what Wilson said next: "Jealous still, the United States in their turn also developed a national consciousness, a dark and bitter one, as any so opposed to ours must be." He spoke not like a politician inflaming a crowd but like a professor setting out arguments- he had taken one path before choosing the other. "The German spirit of arrogance and militarism has taken hold in the United States; they see only the gun as the proper arbiter between nations, and their president takes Wilhelm as his model. He struts and swaggers and acts the fool in all regards."”

Now he sounded like a politician; he despised Theodore Roosevelt, and took pleasure in Roosevelt's dislike for him.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 32

Charles-François Daubigny photo

“I have bought at Auverse thirty perches of land, all covered with beans, on which I shall plant some legs of mutton when you come to see me. They are building me a studio there, some eight by six meters, with several rooms around it, which will serve me, I hope, next Spring [of 1861]. Father Corot has found Auvers very fine, and has engaged me to fix myself there for a part of the year, wishing to make rustic landscapes with figures. I shall be truly well of there, in the midst of a good farming country, where the ploughs do not yet go by steam.”

Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) French painter

Quote in his letter to his friend Frédéric Henriet, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric+Henriet&title=Special:Search&go=Go&searchToken=dt4h140y68u3oxynlcr55rftr#/media/File:Eaux-fortes._(Frontispiece)_(NYPL_b12616975-1690388).jpg, 1860; as cited in 'Charles-francois Daubigny', by Robert J. Wichenden, in The Century Illustrated Montly Magazine, Vol. XLIV, July 1892, p. 335
Daubigny bought property in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1860; four years later Corot would decorate there his Villa des Vallées, with beautiful murals.
1840s - 1850s

“This shifted the centre of a truly Hellenic civilization to the east, to the Aegean, the Ionian littoral of Asia Minor and to Constantinople. It also meant that modem Greeks could hardly count as being of ancient Greek descent, even if this could never be ruled out.’ There is a sense in which the preceding discussion is both relevant to a sense of Greek identity, now and earlier, and irrelevant. It is relevant in so far as Greeks, now and earlier, felt that their ‘Greekness’ was a product of their descent from the ancient Greeks (or Byzantine Greeks), and that such filiations made them feel themselves to be members of one great ‘super-family’ of Greeks, shared sentiments of continuity and membership being essential to a lively sense of identity. It is irrelevant in that ethnies arc constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i. e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in distinctive myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population. In that sense much has been retained, and revived, from the extant heritage of ancient Greece. For, even at the time of Slavic migrations, in Ionia and especially in Constantinople, there was a growing emphasis on the Greek language, on Greek philosophy and literature, and on classical models of thought and scholarship. Such a ‘Greek revival’ was to surface again in the tenth and fourteenth centuries, as well as subsequently, providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: National Identity (1991), p. 29: About Ethnic Change, Dissolution and Survival

Fyodor Dan photo
Patrick Pearse photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo

“Almost all governments and known figures strongly condemned this incident [the September 11 attacks]. But then a propaganda machine came into full force; it was implied that the whole world was exposed to a huge danger, namely terrorism, and that the only way to save the world would be to deploy forces into Afghanistan. Eventually Afghanistan, and, shortly thereafter, Iraq were occupied.… In identifying those responsible for the attack, there were three viewpoints: (1) That a very powerful and complex terrorist group, able to successfully cross all layers of the American intelligence and security, carried out the attack. This is the main viewpoint advocated by American statesmen. (2) That some segments within the U. S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view. (3) It was carried out by a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation. Apparently, this viewpoint has fewer proponents.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Speech to the United Nations General Assembly http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/09/transcript-of-president-mahmoud-ahmadinejads-un-speech/ (22 September 2010). CNN and other American news agencies reported the emphasized remark as Ahmadinejad's expression of a personal belief.
2010

Jackson Browne photo
Jerry Springer photo

“Okay bear with me this'll be a little tough. You should know this isn't the first time I thought about leaving. I thought about it some twenty years ago when a check that would soon become a part of Cincinnati folklore, made me see life from the bottom. To be honest, a thought about ending it all crossed my mind, but a more reasonable alternative seemed to be 'hey how about just leaving town? Running away? Starting life over, some place else?' You see, in political terms as well as human, here in Cincinnati, I was dead. But then in the, probably, the luckiest decision I ever made, I decided 'No! I'm staying put!' I would withstand all the jokes, all the ridicule. I'd pretend it didn't hurt, and I would give every ounce of my being to Cincinnati. 'Why in time,' I was thinking, 'you'd have to like me. Or if not like me, at least respect me.' And I'd run for council even unendorsed. And I'd prove to you I could be the best public servant you ever had, or I'd die trying. Be it as a mayor, an anchor, or a commentator, whatever it took, I was determined to have you know that I was more than a check and a hooker on a one night stand. But something happened along the way. Maybe it's God's way of teaching us. I don't know, but you see? In trying to prove something to you, I learned something about me. I learned that I had fallen in love with you. With Cincinnati. With you who taught me more about life, and caring, and forgiving, and also most importantly, giving. Giving something back. Which is part of the reason… I have been… Excuse me. So sad this week. why… Why it's so hard to say goodbye. God bless you, and goodbye.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

his final commentary at NBC's WLWT in Ohio, January 1993
This American Life http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/04/258.html, Ep. 258, 01/30/04, Leaving the Fold; Act One.

Skye Sweetnam photo
Hendrik Lorentz photo

“One has been led to the conception of electrons, i. e. of extremely small particles, charged with electricity, which are present in immense numbers in all ponderable bodies, and by whose distribution and motions we endeavor to explain all electric and optical phenomena that are not confined to the free ether…. according to our modern views, the electrons in a conducting body, or at least a certain part of them, are supposed to be in a free state, so that they can obey an electric force by which the positive particles are driven in one, and the negative electrons in the opposite direction. In the case of a non-conducting substance, on the contrary, we shall assume that the electrons are bound to certain positions of equilibrium. If, in a metallic wire, the electrons of one kind, say the negative ones, are travelling in one direction, and perhaps those of the opposite kind in the opposite direction, we have to do with a current of conduction, such as may lead to a state in which a body connected to one end of the wire has an excess of either positive or negative electrons. This excess, the charge of the body as a whole, will, in the state of equilibrium and if the body consists of a conducting substance, be found in a very thin layer at its surface.
In a ponderable dielectric there can likewise be a motion of the electrons. Indeed, though we shall think of each of them as haying a definite position of equilibrium, we shall not suppose them to be wholly immovable. They can be displaced by an electric force exerted by the ether, which we conceive to penetrate all ponderable matter… the displacement will immediately give rise to a new force by which the particle is pulled back towards its original position, and which we may therefore appropriately distinguish by the name of elastic force. The motion of the electrons in non-conducting bodies, such as glass and sulphur, kept by the elastic force within certain bounds, together with the change of the dielectric displacement in the ether itself, now constitutes what Maxwell called the displacement current. A substance in which the electrons are shifted to new positions is said to be electrically polarized.
Again, under the influence of the elastic forces, the electrons can vibrate about their positions of equilibrium. In doing so, and perhaps also on account of other more irregular motions, they become the centres of waves that travel outwards in the surrounding ether and can be observed as light if the frequency is high enough. In this manner we can account for the emission of light and heat. As to the opposite phenomenon, that of absorption, this is explained by considering the vibrations that are communicated to the electrons by the periodic forces existing in an incident beam of light. If the motion of the electrons thus set vibrating does not go on undisturbed, but is converted in one way or another into the irregular agitation which we call heat, it is clear that part of the incident energy will be stored up in the body, in other terms [words] that there is a certain absorption. Nor is it the absorption alone that can be accounted for by a communication of motion to the electrons. This optical resonance, as it may in many cases be termed, can likewise make itself felt even if there is no resistance at all, so that the body is perfectly transparent. In this case also, the electrons contained within the molecules will be set in motion, and though no vibratory energy is lost, the oscillating particles will exert an influence on the velocity with which the vibrations are propagated through the body. By taking account of this reaction of the electrons we are enabled to establish an electromagnetic theory of the refrangibility of light, in its relation to the wave-length and the state of the matter, and to form a mental picture of the beautiful and varied phenomena of double refraction and circular polarization.
On the other hand, the theory of the motion of electrons in metallic bodies has been developed to a considerable extent…. important results that have been reached by Riecke, Drude and J. J. Thomson… the free electrons in these bodies partake of the heat-motion of the molecules of ordinary matter, travelling in all directions with such velocities that the mean kinetic energy of each of them is equal to that of a gaseous molecule at the same temperature. If we further suppose the electrons to strike over and over again against metallic atoms, so that they describe irregular zigzag-lines, we can make clear to ourselves the reason that metals are at the same time good conductors of heat and of electricity, and that, as a general rule, in the series of the metals, the two conductivities change in nearly the same ratio. The larger the number of free electrons, and the longer the time that elapses between two successive encounters, the greater will be the conductivity for heat as well as that for electricity.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Source: The Theory of Electrons and Its Applications to the Phenomena of Light and Radiant Heat (1916), Ch. I General principles. Theory of free electrons, pp. 8-10

Alan García photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Robert T. Bakker photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Jean Ingelow photo
John Hicks photo
Alex Salmond photo
Madeleine K. Albright photo

“When we're trying to solve difficult national issues its sometimes necessary to talk to adversaries as well as friends. Historians have a word for this: diplomacy.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Speech at Harvard forum (April 11, 2007)
2000s

John Banville photo

“As Mahoba was for some time the headquarters of the early Muhammadan Governors, we could hardly expect to find that any Hindu buildings had escaped their furious bigotry, or their equally destructive cupidity. When the destruction of a Hindu temple furnished the destroyer with the ready means of building a house for himself on earth, as well as in heaven, it is perhaps wonderful that so many temples should still be standing in different parts of the country. It must be admitted, however, that, in none of the cities which the early Muhammadans occupied permanently, have they left a single temple standing, save this solitary temple at Mahoba, which doubtless owed its preservation solely to its secure position amid the deep waters of the Madan-Sagar. In Delhi, and Mathura, in Banaras and Jonpur, in Narwar and Ajmer, every single temple was destroyed by their bigotry, but thanks to their cupidity, most of the beautiful Hindu pillars were preserved, and many of them, perhaps, on their original positions, to form new colonnades for the masjids and tombs of the conquerors. In Mahoba all the other temples were utterly destroyed and the only Hindu building now standing is part of the palace of Parmal, or Paramarddi Deva, on the hill-fort, which has been converted into a masjid. In 1843, I found an inscription of Paramarddi Deva built upside down in the wall of the fort just outside this masjid. It is dated in S. 1240, or A. D. 1183, only one year before the capture of Mahoba by Prithvi-Raj Chohan of Delhi. In the Dargah of Pir Mubarak Shah, and the adjacent Musalman burial-ground, I counted 310 Hindu pillars of granite. I found a black stone bull lying beside the road, and the argha of a lingam fixed as a water-spout in the terrace of the Dargah. These last must have belonged to a temple of Siva, which was probably built in the reign of Kirtti Varmma, between 1065 and 1085 A. D., as I discovered an inscription of that prince built into the wall of one of the tombs.”

Archaeological Survey of India, Volume I: Four Reports Made During the Years 1862-63-64-65, Varanasi Reprint, 1972, Pp. 440-41. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1993). Hindu temples: What happened to them. Volume I.

Mikhail Bulgakov photo

“You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev.
'Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.
'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.
'I protest!”

Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!'
Book Two in 'The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth', P/V
The Master and Margarita (1967)

Markiplier photo

“[begins the game; gets startled by the enemy character flying away from him] "Okay—UH! …Well, that startled the crap outta me."”

Markiplier (1989) American YouTuber and Internet personality

Video game commentary, SuperHOT prototype (September 15, 2013)
Source: SuperHOT, Markiplier, wikipedia:Markiplier, September 15, 2013, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7qY7s1tCtU,
Source: SUPERHOT - an FPS where time moves only when you move, 2014, July 9, 2014 http://superhotgame.com,

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Glenn Beck photo

“…I said yesterday on Fox & Friends, I think the president is a racist, I think he has race issues. Don't know if he hates white people, but there's something going on with the president. Well, I stand by that. And I deem him a racist based on really his own standard of racism, the standard of the left.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2009-07-29
Beck "stands by" Fox & Friends remarks that "I think the president is a racist"
Media Matters for America
2009-07-29
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907290012
2000s, 2009

Nick Cave photo

“Well, ah tied on, percht on mah bed ah was,
Sticken' a needle in mah arm, Ah tied off,
Fucken wings burst out mah back!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), Mutiny in Heaven

John Rogers Searle photo

“many seemingly independent businessmen or craftsman are more or less well paid retainers of larger corporations, such as the cobbler, operating a United States shoe machine or an automobile dealer holding a license of the General Motors Corporation.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Four, Standstill and Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, II, p. 84

Edgar Bergen photo

“Charlie McCarthy: I can't take this schoolwork any more - it's driving me nuts.
Edgar Bergen: Well Charlie, I'm sorry, but hard work never killed anyone.
Charlie McCarthy: Still, there's no use in taking chances.”

Edgar Bergen (1903–1978) American actor, radio performer, comedian and ventriloquist

Quoted in Todd Harris Goldman, Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes (2001) p. 136

Edward R. Murrow photo

“When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

1959, Dons Or Crooners?: Three Lectures on the Subject of Communication in the Modern World, The British Association Granada Lectures, (Three lectures given in Guildhall London in October 1959 on the subject of communication in the modern world), Lecture Title: Television and Politics, Speaker: Edward R. Murrow, Start Page 47, Quote Page 75 and 76, Published by Granada TV, London.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to ensure a long-continued and honest administration of it's powers. 1. They are not qualified to exercise themselves the EXECUTIVE department: but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it. With us therefore they chuse this officer every 4. years. 2. They are not qualified to LEGISLATE. With us therefore they only chuse the legislators. 3. They are not qualified to JUDGE questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of JURIES therefore they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. Butwe all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. It is left therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.”

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

Letter to the Abbé Arnoux (19 July 1787) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0275
1780s

Susie Bright photo
John Hannah (actor) photo
John Adams photo

“A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest, as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.”

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

"Discourses on Davila: A Series of Papers on Political History," No. 4 Gazette of the United States (1790–1791)
1790s, Discourses on Davila (1790)

Farrokh Tamimi photo
John Muir photo

“Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.”

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

letter http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirletters/id/9847/show/9846 to Catharine Merrill, from New Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Valley (9 June 1872); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 9: Persons and Problems
1870s

Hillary Clinton photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“But we have an opportunity before us to reassert our desire and to lend the force of our example for the peaceful adjudication of differences between nations. Such action would be in entire harmony with the policy which we have long advocated. I do not look upon it as a certain guaranty against war, but it would be a method of disposing of troublesome questions, an accumulation of which leads to irritating conditions and results in mutually hostile sentiments. More than a year ago President Harding proposed that the Senate should authorize our adherence to the protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice, with certain conditions. His suggestion has already had my approval. On that I stand. I should not oppose other reservations, but any material changes which would not probably receive the consent of the many other nations would be impracticable. We can not take a step in advance of this kind without assuming certain obligations. Here again if we receive anything we must surrender something. We may as well face the question candidly, and if we are willing to assume these new duties in exchange for the benefits which would accrue to us, let us say so. If we are not willing, let us say that. We can accomplish nothing by taking a doubtful or ambiguous position. We are not going to be able to avoid meeting the world and bearing our part of the burdens of the world. We must meet those burdens and overcome them or they will meet us and overcome us. For my part I desire my country to meet them without evasion and without fear in an upright, downright, square, American way.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

David Fleming photo

“The study of economic lift-off is well developed; touch-down has not been considered. There is an asymmetry here which would invite comment if applied to aviation.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. 473, entry on Touch-Down http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Flavor Flav photo
Tom Wolfe photo
John Trumbull (poet) photo
Gabrielle Roy photo
Naomi Klein photo

“Expletives serve opinions well which are not sure enough of themselves to risk expression in restrained language.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 100

“Serve well your country with a true-red heart.
Defend your people with an iron will.”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 369–370

Eric Maisel photo
Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Francis S. Collins photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

A Dreary Story or A Tedious Story (1889)

Daniel Burnham photo
Ausonius photo
Samuel Butler photo
Theresa May photo

“George Bush and Tony Blair deserve the gratitude of everyone for standing up to the forces of evil. And they deserve our thanks as well for the action they are taking to disarm Saddam Hussein.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Conservative Party conference http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/07/conservatives2002.conservatives1 (07 October 2002)

Franco Modigliani photo
Sam Harris photo
Amir Taheri photo
Jane Taylor photo

“Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My mother.”

Jane Taylor (1783–1824) British poet

Ann Taylor, "My Mother," from Original Poems for Infant Minds (1804)
Misattributed

Khaled Hosseini photo
Joan Miró photo
Ben Jonson photo

“Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks…”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

George W. Bush photo
Wu Den-yih photo

“We should rebuild a just and harmonious society, where amicability exists between labor and capital, the younger and older generations, men and women, as well as concerned parties in the recent debates about legalizing same-sex marriage.”

Wu Den-yih (1948) Taiwanese politician

Wu Den-yih (2017) cited in: " Wu pledges just governance if elected http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/01/10/2003662833" in Taipei Times, 10 January 2017.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“The messages of the prophets are essentially indictments of Israel for breach of covenant. They preserved some memory of the old traditions, but were not so naive as to think that the literal demands of the old law would be adequate in their own times. There is no condemnation of the stratification of society as such, rather a condemnation of the injustice and extortion which was done by the powerful. To take a specific example, the old law knew as security for a loan only the pledge (Exod. 22:26). In a simple economy, loans were evidently of an amount which would usually be adequately secured by giving to the creditor some property to hold until the loan was repaid. In case of default, the debtor's property simply reverted to the creditor. No other form of security is presupposed in the Covenant Code, and it is specifically forbidden that an Israelite be a "creditor" to one of his fellows. Already in the reign of Saul the situation had changed, Those who gathered about David as outlaws included those who had "creditors" (I Sam. 22:2), and who therefore had to flee. Under the old pledge system of security there would be no possible occasion for flight from the community in case of default. A totally different legal doctrine had come into practice whereby the person of the debtor was security for a loan. Upon default the creditor could seize him (or his family) as a slave, possibly without any legal action at all. The only alternative to slavery would have been flight. This doctrine is identical to that of Babylonian law, and no doubt of the Canaanites as well. It is in the law of the monarchy that Canaanite influence is doubtless to be posited, but it is a legal tradition in total contradiction to the customs and morality of early Israel. Amos protested violently against the way the legal doctrine was practiced, as did most of the prophets (Am. 2:6; Hos. 12:8-9; Mic. 2:1-2). The later lawcodes illustrate beautifully the way in which the early traditions, and the needs of business were brought into harmony. The older pledge system was simply inadequate for a commercial economy; and if the person of the debtor was to be protected, so also must the rights of the creditor to some security for his loan to be guaranteed. Therefore, Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code (Lv. 17-26) accept the doctrine of bodily liability, but place restrictions upon the powers of the creditor over the defaulting debtor. In the Holiness Code he is not to be treated as a slave, nor given the legal status of a slave, but rather to be as a hired laborer.”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Law and Convenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1954)

Maggie Stiefvater photo
Angela Davis photo
Berthe Morisot photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Lawrence H. Summers photo
Akbar photo
Katherine Heigl photo
Alexander Woollcott photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Irene Dunne photo

“Like many New Englanders - he was a neighbor of Calvin Coolidge's in Northampton - he finds life a serious business. But he's never - well - heavy about it.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

about her husband, Dr. Francis Griffin Revealing The Life Of Irene Dunne, by Adele Whitely Fletcher; The Modern Screen (September 1933) http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/modern-screen-september-1933/.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Charles Dickens photo