Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist
Dada poetry lines from his poem 'Der Vogel Selbdritt', Jean / Hans Arp - first published in 1920; as quoted in Gesammelte Gedichte I (transl. Herbert Read), p. 41
1910-20s
Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist
Dada poetry lines from his poem 'Der Vogel Selbdritt', Jean / Hans Arp - first published in 1920; as quoted in Gesammelte Gedichte I (transl. Herbert Read), p. 41
1910-20s
Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent
Source: Tortured For Christ (1967), p. 55.
Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary
Source: The Junius Pamphlet (1915), Ch.1
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to colonel Randolph as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine, (October 2012) <br class="br">Attributed
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)
Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician
"Mr H. Macmillan M.P.", The Times, 8 July 1936, p. 8.
Letter written on 29 June 1936 resigning the Government whip.
1920s-1950s
Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer
Podcast Series 1 Episode 2
On Nudity
Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) Soviet politician
Quoted in "Speeches and Writings: Leaders of the World" - Page 186 - by Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko - Political Science - 1984
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet
1304: Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Pricasso (1949) Australian painter
[Jani Meyer, Pricasso's creative party trick, Sunday Tribune, South Africa, 10 February 2008, 3, Independent Online]
About
Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist
Chap. II
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)
Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher
A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)
Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman
Letter to F. W. Cobden (23 March 1844) on the Factory Act 1844, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 302.
1840s
“Holy cow! You were totally right-- whipped cream ROCKS!”
Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist
Bucky Katt's Big Book of fun, page 61
Bucky Katt, Satchel Pooch
Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer
Quoted on Telegraph.co.uk (October 18, 2012), "Matthew Hayden labels England's James Anderson a 'B-Grade bowler' after dressing-room Ashes fracas" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9617137/Matthew-Hayden-labels-Englands-James-Anderson-a-B-Grade-bowler-after-dressing-room-Ashes-fracas.html
Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America
Speech in New York, 1858.
1850s
Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War
Radio broadcast (22 June 1941) on the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), pp. 1120-1121
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.
Raheem Kassam (1986) British journalist and politician
Brexit Voters Cannot Afford to Give Theresa May a Massive Majority as She Plans Compromise on Free Movement http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05/17/kassam-theresa-may-preparing-screw-brexit-voters-hard-youre-still-voting/ (May 17, 2017)
Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement
The Watch Tower (October 15, 1914), p. 287.
Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger
The First Night.
The White Tiger (2008)
“I am who I am, and yes, I whipped Ali all three times.”
Joe Frazier (1944–2011) American boxer
Frazier referring to his fights with Muhammad Ali. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/sports/othersports/18frazier.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=a3509c26258f5380&ex=1318824000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
David Hume The Natural History of Religion
Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician
Letter to Austen Henry Layard (23 October 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 590.
1860s
John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist
Hagee: U.S. Can't Win Wars Because Of Satan Worship
Right Wing Watch
People for the American Way
2011-07-18
Brian
Tashman
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hagee-us-cant-win-wars-because-satan-worship
2011-08-06
Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician
Philippine Daily Inquirer http://technology.inquirer.net/43213/ntc-urged-to-crack-whip-on-telcos <br class="br">2015
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician
the first sentence was Powell's own quotation from one of his constituents.
The 'Rivers of Blood' speech
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
"Am I Turning Into a Pervert?" (18 November 2003)
2000s
François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller
Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)
Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer
Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 7, “The Snow-Waste” (p. 69)
Yvette Cooper (1969) British politician
Response on Farage's denial for being responsible for whipping up hate against immigrants - Nigel Farage says he is a victim of poltical hatred in response to Jo Cox question http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-jo-cox-dead-murdered-peston-brexit-eu-referendum-ukip-political-hatred-a7089996.html (19 June 2016)
“There are more whipped guys on television than there were on the Amistad.”
Greg Giraldo (1965–2010) American comedian
Midlife Vices (2009)
Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee
“The Empire Pool” Conclave: A Journal of Character, Issue 5, (Spring, 2013)
2010-
Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.
William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist
Thoughts on Accepting Responsibility, 1999
1990s, 1990
Source: [Pierce, 1976-2002, 672]
Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist
In Noam Chomsky - Rebel Without a Pause, 2003 http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/1614027.php <br class="br">Quotes 2000s, 2003
Henry Hawkins, 1st Baron Brampton (1817–1907) British judge
Hardy v. Atherton (1881), L. R. 7 Q. B. 269.
Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 9
Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director
In America with Richard Strauss. Elisabeth Schumann’s Travel Diary (14th October to 31st December 1921). Elisabeth Schumann was a soprano who worked with Strauss in the 1920s and 1930s. He dedicated his Brentano Lieder to her.
Other sources
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician
The Sunday Express (4 February 1982), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 853.
1980s
John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Andrew Culf, "What the `wimp' really said to the S-H-one-T", The Guardian, 26 July 1993.
'Off-the-record' exchange with ITN reporter Michael Brunson following videotaped interview, 23 July 1993. Neither Major nor Brunson realised their microphones were still live and being recorded by BBC staff preparing for a subsequent interview; the tape was swiftly leaked to the Daily Mirror.
Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters
On his father in "The Public Son of a Public Man" as quoted in TIMEmagazine (20 January 1986) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1074981,00.html
Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director
from documentary Traceroute
Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician
Plymouth, Michigan http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/plymouth-michigan-aug1597.html (August 15, 1997) <br class="br">In Concert
Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director
Penultimate paragraph of the published script.
8 1/2 Women
George Gissing book The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
Winter § I, p. 213
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903)
Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer
Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 81.
George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer
1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
Franz Stangl (1908–1971) Austrian-born SS officer, commandant at first Sobibór extermination camp and then Treblinka extermination c…
When asked how he felt about the execution of children. Quoted in "The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections on Germany" - Page 125 - by Gitta Sereny - History - 2001.
David Hume The Natural History of Religion
Part XIV - Bad influence of popular religions on morality
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
[Anne Porter, The Ghosts of Europe: Journeys through Central Europe's Troubled Past and Uncertain Future, http://books.google.com/books?id=8iPa2Q1HtP8C&pg=PA19, 23 September 2010, Douglas & McIntyre, 978-1-55365-637-1, 19]
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)
Lindsey Davis book The Silver Pigs
The Silver Pigs
Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea
Tilbury / Gravesend to London Bridge
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16
François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period
C'est la grande propriété qui a inventé et soutient le trafic des blancs et des noirs qui vend et achète les hommes... C'est elle qui dans les colonies donne aux nègres de nos plantations plus de coup de fouet que de morceau de pain.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 19, 27082 2892-7]
On property
“With whip and spur he paid his tavern bill.”
Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet
XLIV, 70
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato
“Think of it! A second Chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of eunuchs.”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1969/feb/03/parliament-no-2-bill in the House of Commons (3 February 1969) <br class="br">1960s
William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.
1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist
As quoted in Kneller, Karl Alois, Kettle, Thomas Michael, 1911. "Christianity and the leaders of modern science; a contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century" https://archive.org/stream/christianitylead00kneluoft#page/46/mode/2up, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 46
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 10
Gene Tunney (1897–1978) American boxer
On Harry Greb, as quoted in "Harry Greb, The Human Windmill...“A Perpetual Motion Machine.”" by Monte D. Cox
Pricasso (1949) Australian painter
[Daily News staff, Daily News, South Africa, Sexpo's popularity profitable for entrepreneurial granny, 6 February 2009, 5, Independent Online]
About
“Like him in Æsop, he whipped his horses withal, and put his shoulder to the wheel.”
Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy
Section 1, member 2, Lawful Cures, first from God.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.
Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 335.
Religious Wisdom
Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress
Interview by Kate Sullivan for Allure, April 2010
Sofia Samatar book A Stranger in Olondria
Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 3, “Doorways” (p. 19; the first sentence is echoed on p. 273)
Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician
Letter (28 January 1834), reported in A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834), p. 113, final paragraph.
Philip Roth book Goodbye, Columbus
Source: Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Chapter 2
Context: We came back to the chairs now and then and sang hesitant, clever, nervous, gentle dithyrambs about how we were beginning to feel towards one another. Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them-at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them. We whipped our strangeness and newness into a froth that resembled love, and we dared not play too long with it, talk too much of it, or it would flatten and fizzle away. So we moved back and forth from chairs to water, from talk to silence, and considering my unshakable edginess with Brenda, and the high walls of ego that rose, buttresses and all, between her and her knowledge of herself, we managed pretty well.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
Part I, section xiii, stanza 2
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)
Russell Brand book Revolution
Revolution (2014)
Context: The women sway and jump and shriek. Whilst this is all almost entirely foreign, there is something familiar, like a place in your mouth where food always gets caught. Something I recognize. It is orgiastic. This Christianity with a voodoo twist is on the brink of Dionysian breakdown. Through this ritual, I see the root of ritual. The exorcising of the primal, the men engorged, enraged, the women serpentine and lithe. Only the child excluded. I get on my knees, which a few other people are doing, out of respect but also because I’m beginning to sense that it’s only a matter of time before I’m ushered to the front. I’ve not been taught how to be religious. Religious studies at school doesn’t even begin to cover it. There the world’s greatest faiths and the universe’s swirling mysteries are recited like bus timetables. No teacher of RE ever said to me: “Beyond the limited realm of the senses, the shallow pool of the known, is a great untamable ocean, and we don’t have a fucking clue what goes on in there.” What we receive through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch is all we know. We have tools that can enhance that information, we have theories for things that we suspect lie beyond that information, filtered through an apparatus limited once more to those senses. Those senses are limited; the light range we detect is within a narrow spectrum, between infrared light and ultraviolet light; other species see light that we can’t see. In the auditory realm, we hear but a fraction of the sound vibrations; we don’t hear high-pitched frequencies, like dog whistles, and we don’t hear low frequencies like whale song. The world is awash with colors unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests. Expressible only through symbol and story, as it can never be known by the innocent mind. The stories are formulas, poems, tools for reflection through which we may access the realm behind the thinking mind, the consciousness beyond knowing and known, the awareness that is not connected to the haphazard data of biography. The awareness that is not prickled and tugged by capricious emotion. The awareness that is aware that it is aware. In meditation I access it; in yoga I feel it; on drugs it hit me like a hammer—at sixteen, staring into a bathroom mirror on LSD, contrary to instruction (“Don’t look in the mirror, Russ, it’ll fuck your head up.” Mental note: “Look in mirror.”). I saw that my face wasn’t my face at all but a face that I lived behind and was welded to by a billion nerves. I looked into my eyes and saw that there was something looking back at me that was not me, not what I’d taken to be me. The unrefined ocean beyond the shallow pool was cascading through the mirror back at me. Nature looking at nature. Not me, little ol’ Russ, tossed about on turbulent seas; these distinctions were engineered. On acid, these realizations are absolute. The disobedient brain is whipped into its basket like a yapping hound cowed by Cesar Millan.
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
1970s, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)
Context: We've come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England — or the Queen — and have the real business of the presidency conducted by... a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.
Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model
On her near-death experience and final days in New York
Edie : American Girl (1982)
Context: "The Siege of the Warwick Hotel." I was left alone with a substantial supply of speed. I started having strange, convulsive behavior. I was shooting up every half-hour... thinking that with each fresh shot I'd knock this nonsense out of my system. I'd entertain myself hanging on to the bathroom sink with my hind feet stopped up against the door, trying to hold myself steady enough so I wouldn't crack my stupid skull open. I entertained myself by making a tape... a really fabulous tape in which I made up five different personalities. I realized that I had to get barbiturates in order to stop the convulsions, which lasted either hours. Something was spinning in my head.... I just kept thinking that if I could pop enough speed I'd knock the daylights out of my system and none of this nonsense would go on. None of this flailing around and moaning, sweating like a pig, and whew! It was a heavy scene. When I finally cooled down to what I thought was pretty good shape, I slipped on a little muumuu, ran down the stairs of the Warwick, barefoot to the lobby. My eye caught a mailman's jacket and a sack of mail hanging across the back of a chair in the hall way entrance, and before I knew what I was doing, I whipped on the jacket, flipped the bag over my shoulder, and flew out the door, whistling a happy tune. Suddenly I thought: "My God! This is a federal offense. Fooling around with the mail." So I turned around and rushed back and BAM! the manager was waiting for me. He ordered me into the back office. They telephoned an ambulance from Bellevue and packed me into it. Five policemen. I was back into convulsions again, which was really a drag, and I tried to tell the doctors and the nurses and the student interns that I'd run out of barbiturates and overshot speed.... I could speak sanely, but all my motor nerves were going crazy wild. It looked like I was out of my mind. If you had seen me, you wouldn't have bothered to listen, and none of them did. Oh, God, it was a nightmare. Finally six big spade attendants came and held me down on a stretcher. They terrified me... their force against mine. I got twice as bad. I just flipped. I told them if they'd just let go of me, I would calm down and stop kicking and fighting. But they wouldn't listen and they started to tell each other what stages of hallucinations I was in... how I imagined myself an animal. All these things totally unreal to my mind and just guessed on their part. Oh, it was insane. Then they plunged a great needle into my butt and BAM! out I went for two whole days. When I woke up, wow! Rats all over the floor, wailing and screaming. We ate potatoes with spoons. The doctors at Bellevue finally contacted my private physician, and after five days he came and got me out. They sent me back to Gracie Square, a private mental hospital that cost a thousand dollars a week. I was there for five months. Then I ran away with a patient and we went to an apartment in the Seventies somewhere which belonged to another patient in the hospital, who gave us the keys. The guy I ran away with was twenty, but he'd been a junkie since the age of nine, so he was pretty emotionally retarded and something of a drag. I didn't have any pills, so, kind of ravaging around, I went to see a gynecologist and a pretty well-off one. He asked me if I would like to shoot up some acid with him. I hadn't much experience with acid, but I wasn't afraid. He closed his office at five, and we took off in his Aston Martin and drove up the coast... no, what's the name of that river? The Hudson. We stopped at a motel and he gave me three ampules of liquid Sandoz acid, intravenously, mainlining, and he gave himself the same amount and he completely flipped, I was hallucinating and trying to tell him what I was seeing. I'd say, "I see rich, embroidered curtains, and I see people moving in the background. It's the Middle Ages and I am a princess, " and I told him he was some sort of royalty. We made love from eight in the evening until seven in the morning with ecstatic climax after climax, just going insane with it, until he realized it was seven and he had to get back to his office to open it at eight-thirty. He gave me a shot to calm me down, and because I couldn't come down, I took about fourteen Placidyls. On the way back something very strange happened. I didn't realize I was going to say it, but I said out loud, "I wish I was dead"... the love and the beauty and the ecstasy of the whole experience I'd just gone through were really so alien. I didn't even know the man... it had been a one-night jag... he was married and had children... and I just felt lost. It hardly seemed worth living any more because once again I was alone. He dropped me off at the apartment where I was staying with the runaway patient. I had a little Bloody Mary when I got there, and dropped a few more Placidyls. With my tolerance, nothing should have happened, but I suddenly went into a coma. My eyes rolled back in my head. It was lucky... I had called an aide, Jimmy, at the hospital - he had been a good friend - I had called him anonymously and asked him to come and visit us. He happened to turn up just as I went into the coma. He and the heroin addict tried to wake me up. They slapped me and pumped my chest and they put me in a bathtub full of really cold water. Jimmy began to call hospitals - not psychiatric but medical - and one of them actually told them to let me sleep it off. But Jimmy just flipped. He knew I was dying, and he was right. He called Lenox Hill Hospital, and the police finally came. Jimmy and the heroin addict were taken into custody, and I was rushed to the hospital. I was actually declared dead. My mother was called... and then BAM! I started breathing again. I was pretty shaken up by what happened because I didn't understand how I could have almost gone out on just fifteen Placidyls when I used to live on thirty-five three-grain Tunials a day, plus alcohol. They released Jimmy and the junkie, but of course I was still in the trap. I thought I was fine and that I could leave. But a psychiatrist came to interview me and I was put in the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital - committed on the grounds of unintentional, unconscious suicide. It was a pretty devastating experience. They put me on eight hundred milligrams of Thorazine four times a day plus six hundred milligrams at bedtime - an ugly-tasting liquid, but it took quick effect and you couldn't hide the pills or spit them out later. I had all kinds of bad reactions from it - I'd get bad tremors and all itchy and wormy. I said I wasn't going to take the stuff any more, no matter what, so they finally took me off it one day. I had a seizure, vomited all over the floor, and I couldn't get tremendous dosages of Thorazine, but they accused me of importing drugs and taking them there in the hospital. My doctor was young... a resident... and I just told him, "You think I've taken drugs. There's no point in even reasoning with you. I'll just go to some other hospital." I expected to go to some plush, tolerable hospital, but I was not accepted in any private hospital with the record they gave me. They committed me to Manhattan State on Ward's Island, in the middle of the East River, next to the prison. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever been through. Really terrifying. I lived in a big dormitory on a ward with about sixty to eighty women. We did all the mopping, cleaning, making beds, scrubbing toilets. And the people there were just so awful. Really pathetic. Some of them were mean. The staff completely ignored you except to administer medication. I thought it was never going to end. In Manhattan State, even in there, there were pushers. One girl who lived in a smaller dormitory - there were two with about ten beds in them - was pushing speed and heroin. And because I'd been warned that if ever you were caught using drugs in a state hospital you'd be criminally punished, I didn't touch any drugs during the three months I was there.
Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago
Book One, Ch. 2 : A Girl from a Different World, § 10, as translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari (1958)
Variant translations:
I think that if the beast dormant in man could be stopped by the threat of, whatever, the lockup or requital beyond the grave, the highest emblem of mankind would be a lion tamer with his whip, and not the preacher who sacrifices himself. But the point is precisely this, that for centuries man has been raised above the animals and borne aloft not by the rod, but by music: the irresistibility of the unarmed truth, the attraction of its example. It has been considered up to now that the most important thing in the Gospels is the moral pronouncements and rules, but for me the main thing is that Christ speaks in parables from daily life, clarifying the truth with the light of everyday things. At the basis of this lies the thought that communion among mortals is immortal and that life is symbolic because it is meaningful.
Book One, Part 2 : A Girl from a Different World, § 10, as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2010)
I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats of any kind, whether of jail or retribution, then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer, not the prophet who sacrificed himself.... What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
Paraphrase of the 1958 translation, as quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978)
Doctor Zhivago (1957)
Context: I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats — any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death — then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don’t you see, this is just the point — what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. It has always been assumed that the most important things in the Gospels are the ethical maxims and commandments. But for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables taken from life, that He explains the truth in terms of everyday reality. The idea that underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because it is meaningful.
Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist
The Devil's Advocate (1952)
1950s
Context: You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.