Quotes about wish
page 29

“This cold weather has set all the young Folks to providing Bedfellows. I have signed two or three Licences every Day [as a Fairfax Justice of the Peace] since I have been at Home. I wish I knew where to get a good one myself; for I find cold Sheets extremely disagreeable.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Letter to his cousin, James Mercer (5 February 2780)

Peace, Justice, Home, Weather

“If a mathematician wishes to disparage the work of one of his colleagues, say, A, the most effective method he finds for doing this is to ask where the results can be applied. The hard pressed man, with his back against the wall, finally unearths the researches of another mathematician B as the locus of the application of his own results. If next B is plagued with a similar question, he will refer to another mathematician C. After a few steps of this kind we find ourselves referred back to the researches of A, and in this way the chain closes.”

Alfred Tarski (1901–1983) Polish-American logician

Source: The Semantic Conception of Truth (1952), p. 41.

Way, Question

“The waitress took a bar rag, and she wiped it across her eyes.
And as she spoke her voice came out as something like a sigh.
She said "I wish that I was beautiful, or that you were halfway blind.
And I wish I weren't so dog-gone fat, I wish that you were mine.
And I wish that you'd come with me, when I leave for home.
For we both know all about loneliness, and livin' all alone."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Better Place to Be
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Beauty, Dogs, Home, Loneliness

““That is the principal thing,” thought Nekhludoff. “We all live in the silly belief that we ourselves are the lords of our world, that this world has been given us for our enjoyment. But this is evidently untrue. Somebody must have sent us here for some reason. And for this reason it is plain that we will suffer like those laborers suffer who do not fulfill the wishes of their Master. The will of the Lord is expressed in the teachings of Christ. Let man obey Him, and the Kingdom of the Lord will come on earth, and man will derive the greatest possible good.
“Seek the truth and the Kingdom of God, and the rest will come of itself. We seek that which is to come, and do not find it, and not only do we not build the Kingdom of God, but we destroy it.
“So this will henceforth be the task of my life!”
And indeed, from that night a new life began for Nekhludoff; not so much because he had risen into a new stage of existence, but because all that had happened to him till then assumed for him an altogether new meaning.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 92

Life, God, Truth, World

“In 2002, if you asked me to make a wish? I simply would've wished that my music would be a hit.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

I'm Supposed to Die Tonight
Song lyrics, The Massacre (2005)

Music

“The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. 1980s

People, Question, Past, Dependency

“I feel a kind of intellectual regret, not an emotional regret, at having left my parents and that world behind. But it's not a great weight on my soul. In a way I wish it were. To leave one’s background without guilt is an indication of shallowness of character, I suspect.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

World, Way, Feeling, Soul

“I do not think that a Judge would wish any statement which he may have made in the course of a case, merely obiter and casually, to be treated as necessarily being an authority on the subject in question; but when a Judge has thought it necessary for the purpose of a case to make a deliberate examination of the practice of his Court, and to state such practice, I do not think the authority of such statement can be got rid of merely by arguing that it was not really necessary for the actual decision of the case. I think that such a statement if cited as an authority is entitled to great weight, though of course not binding on us as a decision.”

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher (1815–1899) British lawyer, judge and politician

Ex parte Rev. James Bell Cox (1887), L. R. 20 Q. B. D. 19.

Question, Thinking, Decision

“Now you hung with me when all the others turned away turned up their nose.
We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes.
We told each other that we were the wildest, the wildest things we'd ever seen.
Now I wished you would have told me, I wished I could have talked to you.
Just to say goodbye Bobby Jean.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Bobby Jean"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Music, Clothes

“A lot of people have let me know they wished I had been speaking out on public affairs long before now. But in the aftermath of a very divisive election, I thought it would be graceless to do so and possibly damaging to the nation.
And then came September 11th.
In the immediate aftermath, I expressed full support for our Commander-in-Chief, President George W. Bush. Tonight I reaffirm that support of the President's conduct of the military campaign in Afghanistan, and I appreciate his candor in telling the American people that this will be a long struggle — for which the nation must be braced and its political leadership united across party lines.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, Our Larger Tasks (2002)

People, Support

“I wish I were as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.”

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848) British Whig statesman

Lloyd C. Sanders (ed.), Lord Melbourne's Papers (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1889), p. xii
Attributed

“We do not see anything being created today, and yet we do see an entire universe of created material. This clearly indicates a Creator. There are people in the world today who wish to avoid the concept of God. They do not like the idea of a God telling them what to do. Therefore, they have come up with the most dangerous, damnable doctrine every imagined, evolution.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

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

God, People, World, Imagination

“I would suggest that you tell yourselves that you will henceforth be able to remember dreams from the deeper levels of your personality, and you should find that you will be able to do so. You can also tell yourselves when you wish that you will give special attention to the nature of time and space, as these appear within your dreams. You will discover then upon awakening that many perceptions concerning time and space within the dream state will remain within you.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 174, Page 171
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 4

Dreams, Nature, Appearance, Time

“Where does this road lead?
And where does it go from there?
Even if I imagine [the possibilities]
Of course, I have no clue.
I feel the more I wish to be strong
The weaker my heart becomes
In inverse proportion”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Fated
Lyrics, Guilty

Feeling, Imagination, Strong, Heart

“Man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation. He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone. Thus he becomes one and all.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

[Paraphrasing Kant] p. 162.
Sex and Character (1903)

World

“May we not say, perhaps, that the evil man is annihilated because he wished to be annihilated, or that he did not wish strongly enough to eternalize himself because he was evil? May we say that it is not believing in the other life which causes a man to be good, but rather that being good causes him believe in it? And what is being good and being evil? These states belong to the sphere of ethics, not of religion; or rather, does not the doing good though being evil pertain to ethics, and the being good [forgivable] though doing evil, to religion?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

Life, Religion, Forgiveness, Evil

“The individual living in America as it was meant to be would be free to run his business as he wishes, associate with those he likes, dissociate from those he dislikes or disapproves; hire, fire, rent to or evict from, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. This hypothetical free man is at liberty to bruise as many feelings as he likes, so long as his mitts stop at the next man's face. So long as he harms nobody's person or property, our mythic man may live as he wishes to live.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Get off your knees, Gov. Pence!” http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/04/get-off-your-knees-gov-pence.html Target Liberty, April 5, 2015. 2010s, 2015

Feeling, Business, Personality

“The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 56–58

Personality

“Confidence always pleases those who receive it. It is a tribute we pay to their merit, a deposit we commit to their trust, a pledge which gives them a claim upon us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily submit. I do not wish from what I have said to depreciate confidence, so necessary to man.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), I. On Confidence

Confidence, Dependency

“You have now in the field armies sufficient to repel the whole force of your enemies and their base and mercenary auxiliaries. The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom; they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords can look up to Heaven for assistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to Heaven for past, success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory. If I have a wish dearer to my soul than that my ashes may be mingled with those of a Warren and a Montgomery, it is that these American States may never cease to be free and independent.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech about Declaration of Independence (1776)

Religion, Justice, Soul, Confidence

“Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

Other material for Lily Tomlin

Failure

“Each one gave the other the only assistance one man can expect from another: that his friend support him and ask only that he remain himself. It is no great accomplishment to take people as they are, and we must always do so eventually, but to wish them to be as they are, that is a genuine love.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Poets
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Love, People, Support

“Before the age of adulteration it was held that behind each work there stood some conception of its perfect execution. It was this that gave zest to labor and served to measure the degree of success. To the extent that the concept obtained, there was a teleology in work, since the laborer toiled not merely to win sustenance but to see this ideal embodied in his creation. Pride in craftsmanship is well explained by saying that to labor is to pray, for conscientious effort to realize an ideal is a kind of fidelity. The craftsman of old time did not hurry, because the perfect takes no account of time and shoddy work is a reproach to character. But character itself is an expression of self-control, which does not come of taking the easiest way. Where character forbids self-indulgence, transcendence still hovers around. When utilitarianism becomes enthroned and the worker is taught that work is use and not worship, interest in quality begins to decline. … There is a difference between expressing one’s self in form and producing quantity for a market with an eye to speculation. Péguy wished to know what had become of the honor of work. It has succumbed to the same forces as have all other expressions of honor.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), pp. 73-74.

Age, Way, Effort, Time

“One very important thing that young lawyers must know is that when one argues a case and later in the evening you ponder over it and say, that’s what I should have said (but you never said it), that’s the only regret. It could have been the winning point or something you wish you had not said, which is even worse. If you get angry at that point in the courtroom, losing your temper can be a disaster. You can’t afford it because your client suffers and nobody likes you for it. It all comes with age and practice.”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

Conversation with the living legend of law - Fali Sam Nariman

Age, Suffering

“Now don't you know how woman is made?
She flees, and fleeing wants to be caught;
she denies, and denying wants to be carried off;
she fights, and fighting wishes to be vanquished.”

Torquato Tasso Aminta

Hor, non sai tu, com'è fatta la donna?
Fugge, e fuggendo vuol, che altri la giunga;
Niega, e negando vuol, ch'altri si toglia;
Pugna, e pugnando vuol, ch'altri la vinca.
Act II, scene ii.
Aminta (1573)

Fight

“How often had he longed to hold us, hug us, grant our every wish, but held himself back for fear of letting us see his vulnerability, believing as he did that real love demanded not affection but discipline?”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 112
2000s, (2008)

Love, Fear

“Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves.”

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

Letter to Edmund Randolph (26 July 1785) https://books.google.com/books?id=zkRKqnxjbAoC&pg=PA199&dq=%22liberate+and+make+soldiers+at+once+of%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC4Q6AEwA2oVChMIyeyr5cPRxwIVDDU-Ch2IxQjN#v=onepage&q=%22liberate%20and%20make%20soldiers%20at%20once%20of%22&f=false 1780s

Dependency

“Have you seen "The Silence of the Lambs"? What were the lambs doing? They were keeping silent. I wish you doing it as well.”

Kuba Wojewódzki (1963) Polish journalist

Widziałaś film "Milczenie owiec"?
Co robiły owce? Milczały. Czego i tobie życzę.
To Idol contestants

Silence

“It is difficult to become familiar with animals without becoming fond of them, provided one doesn't wish to domineer them. I have never heard that love for animals has changed to hate, but many cases where the opposite happened. Many hunters, obliged to observe the animals while stalking them, in time grow increasingly reluctant to kill them, and finally wish to become wardens in the national parks, to help protect them. Very few vivisectors seem to be hampered by this natural evolution that leads to the love and respect of the animals through a deeper knowledge of them.”

Hans Ruesch (1913–2007) Swiss racing driver

Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), p. 52

Love, Hate, Nature, Knowledge

“The Soviet Union's propaganda clearly wishes to use public opinion in this country to get the West to reduce its own arms while doing nothing themselves. In this way they would gain nuclear superiority. This is simply not on.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech at Cardiff (25 May 1983), quoted in Tim Jones, "Callaghan defends deterrent", The Times (26 May 1983), p. 1. This was during the 1983 general election in which the Labour Party had a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Post-Prime Ministerial

Way, Country

“Well, I wish they had built a Funtown for colored.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

Reluctantly accepting amusement park Funtown for being inaccessible to African-Americans quoted in Coretta: The Story of Coretta Scott King (2006) by Octavia B. Vivian, p. 56
1960s

Color

“The tide of war dose not recede just be cause we wish it to.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Remarks to AJC Global Forum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHcr2baBftE&t=185s (12 May 2014) 2010s, 2014

War

“My personal indignation cannot be compared with the magnitude of my concern for the sad fate of our country! These traitors have thrown the country - which had a good reputation as an island of peace - into the furnace of the American's war! The freedom and solidarity of the nation have been completely destroyed. Millions of our fellow countrymen will rise up to liquidate the reactionary group of Lon Nol and Sirik Matak and their American masters!… I call on all my children, both military and civilian, who cannot stand to remain under the traitor's power, and who are courageous and determined to liberate the fatherland, to fight our enemy. If the children already have weapons, I will bring the ammunition and even new weapons to strengthen them. If the children have no weapons and want to undergo training, I will take measures to help them leave for the military school, deep in the jungle to avoid enemy detection. For those children who are in Europe and wish to serve, come to Moscow or Peking to see me. Long live Cambodia!”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

As quoted by Haing S. Ngor (1987) Surviving the Killing Fields, pages 46-47.
Speeches

Fate, War, Children, Sadness

“But, whenever a portion of this facility we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest of him, must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that with is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of these passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus produced, or feels to be produced, in himself. However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Life, Men, Truth, Feeling

“The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. The corps de ballet were already calling me "the Phantom of the Opera," an intriguing sobriquet which appealed to me very strongly, until I realized that it would mean signing my ransom notes P. T. O. One did not wish to descend to the ridiculous!
O. G. I became and O. G. I have remained.
But I still liked to think of myself as the Phantom.”

Susan Kay Phantom

Erik (p. 360)
Phantom (1990)

Idea, Thinking

“Now, as Emerson turned to the active ministry, he tried emphatically to recover the original fervor of a Paul. When he later came to a parting of the ways with the church, he would see himself as a modern Luther. This personal identification with the great is for Emerson at bottom a hunger for a religion by revelation to us—as he would say in Nature—and not just the history of someone else’s religion. He wished to feel Christianity with feelings as strong as Paul’s. He did not wish merely to report Paul’s feeling as though such things were impossible in the modern world.”

Robert D. Richardson (1934) American historian

Source: Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995), p. 90

Hunger, World, Religion, Way

“But your Squabbles about a Bishop I wish to see speedily ended. … Each Party abuses the other, the Profane and the Infidel believe both sides, and enjoy the Fray; the Reputation of Religion in general suffers, and its enemies are ready to say, not what was said in the primitive Times, Behold how these Christians love one another, but, Mark how these Christians [hate] one another! Indeed when religious People quarrel about Religion, or hungry People about their Victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Jane Mecom, 23 February 1769 http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=16&page=050a Epistles

Love, People, Religion, Suffering

“No rest is to be found
But in Thy blessèd love;
O let my wish be crowned
And send it from above.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

"The Desponding Soul's Wish"
Miscellaneous Poems (1773)

Love

“People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Introduction
Infidel (2007)

Death, People, Silence, Time

“We do not wish to “judge” or assess out surrounding merely as a kind of expressive activity carelessly projected onto the world, but we wish to evaluate the world “correctly,” i. e., in according with that it truly is, and the desire to know is directed at determining what the world truly is.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 40.

World

“A man should also take heart that life is like a revolving wheel, and in the end he or his son or his son's son may be reduced to taking tzedaka. He should not think, therefore, "How shall I diminish my property in order to give to the poor." Instead, he should realize that his property is not his own, but only deposited with him in trust to do with as the Depositor (God) wishes.”

Shlomo Ganzfried book Kitzur Shulchan Aruch

Kitzur Shulchan Aruch

Life, God, Thinking, Heart

“What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 19

Love, War, Peace, Beauty

“The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.”

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

Letter to Thomas Law, 1813. FE 9:433
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

Idea, Thinking, Sincerity

“Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

"Ode on Solitude", st. 1 (c. 1700).

Happiness

“It will be enough, for our purposes, to define 'reality' as a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our own volition (we cannot 'wish them away'), and to define 'knowledge' as the certainty that phenomena are real and that they possess specific characteristics.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 1 (1999; 13)

Knowledge, Reality

“Be glad you're fifty — and
That you got there while things were nice,
In a world worth looking at twice.
So here's wishing you many more years,
But not all that many. Cheers!”

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) English novelist, poet, critic, teacher

"Ode to Me", (p. 134)
Collected Poems, 1944-1979 (1979)

World

“I can say, if I wish, extremely mean and hateful things. I have read a great many religious papers and discussions and think that I now know all the infamous words in our language.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Hate, Thinking, Reading

“I'm alright with living on the edge
Everything I ever got I got the hard way
Wouldn't think of wishing on the shooting star
I'm the underdog.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Underdog
Resurrection (2014)

Way, Star, Thinking

“I don't understand how any man would wish to pursue such a away of life. Causing pain, being hurt, risking death — and for what? so that a crowd of fat-bellied merchants can see blood flow.”

David Gemmell book Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Source: Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf, Ch. 2

Life, Death, Pain, Understanding

“When our Constitution was adopted on 26th November, 1949 our statesmen and visionaries had said that the Constitution is as good or bad as people who are entrusted to administer it, wish it to be.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Address By Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma President Of India On The Occasion Of The 50th Anniversary Of The First Sitting Of The Constituent Assembly

People

“To make matters worse, they have elected a foetus as the party leader. I bet a lot of them wish they had not voted against abortion now!”

Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician

"Beyond a joke: the ones that went too far" http://politics.guardian.co.uk/redbox/story/0,9029,1157599,00.html, Guardian Unlimited, 27 February 2004. comment on both the Conservative Party leader William Hague and the abortion debate at a Labour Party conference fringe meeting, 1997.

“To me, this is very boring music—most of it. It has nothing happening. Nothing is sticking. They’re playing music perfectly with wonderful intonation and technique, but it’s dangerous for jazz itself. I do wish these people all the best.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

On Wynton Marsalis and the revival of traditional jazz
Prasad interview (1997)

People, Music

“I say, Archbishop, all this reforming gives a deuced deal of trouble, eh? eh? I wish they'd let it all alone…I say, Archbishop, what do you think I'd have done about this slavery business, if I'd had my own way? I'd have done nothing at all! I'd have left it all alone. It's all a pack of nonsense! Always have been slaves in all the most civilised countries; the Greeks and Romans had slaves; however, they would have their fancy, and so we've abolished slavery; but it's a great folly.”

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848) British Whig statesman

E. Jane Whately (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D. Late Archbishop of Dublin. Volume II (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1866), pp. 451-452
Attributed

Way, Business, Thinking, Country

“I wish you all the pleasurable excitement one can have without hurting others and one's own dignity.”

Norbert Elias (1897–1990) German sociologist

Closing statement on a Dutch TV interview http://www.vpro.nl/programma/beschaving/afleveringen/22058443/items/22149355/. Lessen van Elias, Norbert Elias, portret van een socioloog, VPRO, april 23 1975/ 2005

Pleasure, Hurt

“Among those who voted Brexit, there is still support for Parliament and its traditional sovereignty, for the monarchy, for the NHS, and for the Union. As the Copeland by-election showed, they prefer to vote Conservative rather than Ukip, and as the Stoke result indicates, many will grudgingly vote Labour rather than Ukip. What they wish to see is a democratic politics that represents their interests. If this is populism then it is of a muted English variety that wishes to see the renewal of national institutions and a recognition that family, place and work—the things that matter to them—matter to their rulers.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Prospect Magazine, Why Brexit is a chance for national renewal, 13 March 2017 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/why-brexit-is-a-chance-for-national-renewal

Family, Support

“Gurdjieff said, “Change depends on you, and it will not come about through study. You can know everything and yet remain where you are. It is like a man who knows all about money and the laws of banking, but has no money of his own in the bank. What does all his knowledge do for him?”

Here Gurdjieff suddenly changed his manner of speaking, and looking at me very directly he said: “You have the possibility of changing, but I must warn you that it will not be easy. You are still full of the idea that you can do what you like. In spite of all your study of free will and determinism, you have not yet understood that so long as you remain in this place, you can do nothing at all. Within this sphere there is no freedom. Neither your knowledge nor all your activity will give you freedom. This is because you have no …” Gurdjieff found it difficult to express what he wanted in Turkish. He used the word varlik, which means roughly the quality of being present. I thought he was referring to the experience of being separated from one’s body.

Neither I nor the Prince [Sabaheddin] could understand what Gurdjieff wished to convey. I felt sad, because his manner of speaking left me in no doubt that he was telling me something of great importance. I answered, rather lamely, that I knew that knowledge was not enough, but what else was there to do but study?…”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 46–48 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Constantinople 1920

Money, Sadness, Law, Idea

“I do believe we are going to have a major war, with Japan and Germany, and that the war is going to start by a very serious surprise attack and defeat of U. S. armed forces, and that there is going to be a major revulsion on the part of the political power in Washington against all those in command at sea, and they are going to be thrown out, though it won't be their fault necessarily. And I wish to be in a position of sufficient prominence so that I will then be considered as one to be sent to sea, because that appears to be the route.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

On his expectations of war, and that he would someday become the Chief of Naval Operations, in a conversation during the mid 1930s with his son, Chester W. Nimitz, Jr.; as quoted in Nimitz (1976) by E. B. Potter. ISBN 0870214926

War, Appearance, Parting, Sea

“Original spelling: Our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie.”

Edward Winslow

Modern spelling: Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
Mourt's Relation

Men, God, Exercises, Time

“We have been attempting to relieve ourselves and the other nations from the old theory of competitive armaments. In spite of all the arguments in favor of great military forces, no nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or to insure its victory in time of war. No nation ever will. Peace and security are more likely to result from fair and honorable dealings, and mutual agreements for a limitation of armaments among nations, than by any attempt at competition in squadrons and battalions. No doubt this country could, if it wished to spend more money, make a better military force, but that is only part of the problem which confronts our Government. The real question is whether spending more money to make a better military force would really make a better country. I would be the last to disparage the military art. It is an honorable and patriotic calling of the highest rank. But I can see no merit in any unnecessary expenditure of money to hire men to build fleets and carry muskets when international relations and agreements permit the turning of such resources into the making of good roads, the building of better homes, the promotion of education, and all the other arts of peace which minister to the advancement of human welfare. Happily, the position of our country is such among the other nations of the world that we have been and shall be warranted in proceeding in this direction.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Men, Money, War, World

“I don't have any particular wish to be polemical or didactic; I don't have a "message", but what I do thoroughly enjoy are those works of art, not necessarily in the cinema, but in the other arts as well, which have an encyclopaedic world.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

World, Art

“As I was a stranger to all the lower country, I thought it absolutely necessary for me to come for ward. A thorough knowledge of the country is not easily obtained; such a one, at least, as is necessary to fix upon the most eligible position for forming a camp. The security of the army, the ease and convenience of the troops, as well as to perform the du ties of my office with a degree of reputation, all conspired to make me wish to fix upon the properest ground for the purpose. This it was impossible for me to do, unless I came on before the troops. And I must confess I saw no objection, as your Excellency had wrote me nothing to the contrary, and what I wrote naturally led to such a measure.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1778)

Nature, Knowledge, Country

“Man is an alchemist in his own domain. He can change the basest metals of his life into the finest gold. He can transform every element within his' own existence and make it what he may wish it to be. And though it is true that we shall meet many things that we do not look for, many adversities that we did not create, still we should count it all joy because we can make good use of everything^ and turn all things to good account.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

What is Truth (1912)

Life, Change, Joy

“A true philosopher does not engage in vain disputes about the nature of motion; rather, he wishes to know the laws by which it is distributed, conserved or destroyed, knowing that such laws is the basis for all natural philosophy.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Law, Nature

“Anybody can reduce taxes, but it is not so easy to stand in the gap and resist the passage of increasing appropriation bills which would make tax reduction impossible. It will be very easy to measure the strength of the attachment to reduced taxation by the power with which increased appropriations are resisted. If at the close of the present session the Congress has kept within the budget which I propose to present, it will then be possible to have a moderate amount of tax reduction and all the tax reform that the Congress may wish for during the next fiscal year. The country is now feeling the direct stimulus which came from the passage of the last revenue bill, and under the assurance of a reasonable system of taxation there is every prospect of an era of prosperity of unprecedented proportions. But it would be idle to expect any such results unless business can continue free from excess profits taxation and be accorded a system of surtaxes at rates which have for their object not the punishment of success or the discouragement of business, but the production of the greatest amount of revenue from large incomes. I am convinced that the larger incomes of the country would actually yield more revenue to the Government if the basis of taxation were scientifically revised downward. Moreover the effect of the present method of this taxation is to increase the cost of interest. on productive enterprise and to increase the burden of rent. It is altogether likely that such reduction would so encourage and stimulate investment that it would firmly establish our country in the economic leadership of the world.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

World, Feeling, Business, Success

“At this point, here is a parenthesis about the life of the author, which joined the deed to the word: Hélène included to the book on her father, a very short Appendix, "Le devoir d'abolir la guerre", which was taken from the second volume of the Germen works or Spir, and had previously been reproduced, I quote, "in the Jounal de Genève, 15 November 1920, at the time of the maiden Assembly of the United Nations, which Spir has, lately (not long ago, "naguère", Fr.) so much called for (or invite to think about) of all his wishes." ("tant appelée de ses voeux", Fr). The following is a footnote added to this text, that Spir published in the first edition of Recht und Unrecht, in 1879, as an Appendix, under the title of "Considération sur la guerre" - and which was published again in 1931, in Propos sur la guerre. : "To declare (or say) that the establishment of international institutions intended (or used) to settle (or solve) conflicts among people without having recourse to war, this is purely gratuitious affirmation. What sense (or meaning) can it be to declare impossible, something that has been neither wished (or wanted, "voulue", Fr.) seriously, nor tried to put into practice? In truth, there are not any impossibility here, no more of a material order than of a metaphysical order. ("En vérité, il n'y a ici aucun impossibilité, pas plus d'ordre matériel que d'ordre métaphysique", Fr). Supposing that all responsible potentates, ministers and leaders were to be warned (or were given formal notice? - "soient mis en demeure de", Fr.) to agree concerning the establishment (or creation) of international organizations with peaceful workings ("à rouages pacifiques", Fr.), they would not be very long to come to an agreement on the ways and means ("voies et moyens", Fr.) to come to settle the problem. And, indeed, how insoluble could be a problem, that requires nothing else than some good will here and there? It is not a question here of fighting against a terrestrial power, hostile to human beings and independent of their will; it is only for men a matter of overcoming their own passions, et their harmful prejudices. ("En cela", Fr.) In this, would it be more difficult than to kill one's fellow men by the hundred of thousands, de destroy entire (or whole) countries et inflict (or impose) crushing expanses to one own people?"”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), pp. 64-65 - end of parenthesis.

Life, Men, Hostility, War

“Which I wish to remark,—
And my language is plain,—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.”

Bret Harte (1836–1902) American author and poet

The Heathen Chinee (1870)

Way

“Throughout my advocacy of the University's cause I had experienced the truth of Goethe's maxim that it is best, if you wish to influence people, to begin by assuming that they are already what you would have them to be.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 265

People, Truth, Universe

“I now wonder that my book could so long, escape the Vigilance of the Guardians of the Public Manners since nothing is truer than that more Clergymen bought it in proportion than any other distinction of men…. The Bishops can take no step to punishing the author that will not powerfully contribute to the notoriety of the book….
a Book I disdain to defend, and wish, from my Soul, buried and forgot.”

John Cleland (1709–1789) British writer

Letter from John Cleland to Lovel Stanhope, Law Clerk in the Secretary of State’s Office, 13 November, 1749.

Men, Books, Soul

“We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others.”

Israel Shahak (1933–2001) Israeli academic

With Norton Mezvinsky.
Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel (1997)

Love, Past, Parting

“All natural philosophers, who wished to proceed mathematically in their work, have hence invariably (although unknown to themselves) made use of metaphysical principles, and must make use of such, it matters not how energetically they may otherwise repudiate any claim of metaphysics on their science.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Preface, Tr. Bax (1883)
(1786)

Mathematics, Nature, Science

“I wish everybody was as nice as I am.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

2010s, Audience Q&A following interview panel at Aalto University Center, 2012

“But now, severed from the companion of my infancy, the partaker of all my thoughts, my cares, and my wishes, I was like one set afloat upon a stormy sea, hanging his safety upon a plank; night was closing upon him, and an unexpected surge had torn him from his hold and overwhelmed him forever.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Sea, Night

“The wind breath'd soft as lover's sigh,
And, oft renew'd, seem'd oft to die,
With breathless pause between,
O who, with speech of war and woes,
Would wish to break the soft repose
Of such enchanting scene!”

Walter Scott The Lord of the Isles

Canto IV, stanza 13.
The Lord of the Isles (1815)

War, Lovers

“You live in an age that is dominated by science and engineering. …Thus if you wish to be effective in the world and to achieve the things that you want, it is necessary to understand both science and engineering”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

and those require mathematics
Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Age, World, Mathematics, Understanding

“The managers will exercise their control over the instruments of production and gain preference in the distribution of the products, not directly, through property rights vested in them as individuals, but indirectly, through their control of the state which in turn will own and control the instruments of production. The state – that is, the institutions which comprise the state – will if we wish to put it that way, be the “property” of the managers’.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 71–72; As cited in: Stijn Maria Verhagen (2005). Zorglogica’s uit balans. p. 300

Way, Exercises

“Life was about spending time together, about having the time to walk together holding hands, talking quietly as they watched the sun go down. It wasn't glamorous, but it was, in many ways, the best that life had to offer. Wasn't that how the old saying went? Who, on their deathbed, ever said they wished they had worked harder? Or spent less time enjoying a quiet afternoon? Or spent less time with their family?”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Lexie Darnell, Chapter 17, p. 269
2000s, True Believer (2005)

Life, Family, Way, Time

“Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free,
First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Remember Thee.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Flowers, Sea

“Our nation should always derive its character directly from the people and let this be the strength and the image to be presented to the world — the character of the American people.
To our friends and allies I say that what unites us through our common dedication to democracy is much more important than that which occasionally divides us on economics or politics. To the nations that seek to lift themselves from poverty I say that America shares your aspirations and extends its hand to you. To those nation-states that wish to compete with us I say that we neither fear competition nor see it as an obstacle to wider cooperation. To all people I say that after two hundred years America still remains confident and youthful in its commitment to freedom and equality, and we always will be.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Pre-Presidency, First Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech (1976)

People, Youth, World, Fear

“Treat us the way you wish to be treated”

Tiffany Brar (1988) Indian Social Activist

https://twitter.com/BrarTiffany/status/976759180936740864

Way

“The principles upon which this nation was founded are those upon which its survival, no less than its prosperity, depend. These are the principles upon which we believe our freedom and prosperity as individuals, and that of our children depend. These principles are simple and familiar enough for anyone to understand who wishes to understand. Selfish motives, miseducation, or ideological blindness may lead some to deny or disparage them. But nothing can obscure their shining truth… Lincoln at Gettysburg said that the nation, at its birth, had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Earlier, Lincoln had said that the proposition of equality was the 'central idea' of the founding, from which all its minor thoughts emanated.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008)

Men, Children, Truth, Motivation

“I will soon have finished another drawing [= watercolor], in the spirit as Den Tessaro [art-seller in Antwerp] wished another one, that is 'airy' and 'thin', with 'lots of space', etc.-. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Ik zal binnenkort eene andere teekening [= aquarel] gereed hebben, in den geest zoals Den Heer Tessaro [kunst-handelaar in Antwerpen] er nog een wenschte, namenlijk 'luchtig' en 'dun', met 'veel ruimte', etc.-.
In a letter to art-seller Frans Buffa in Amsterdam, 1874; ; as cited in Willem Roelofs 1822-1897 De Adem der natuur, ed. Marjan van Heteren & Robert-Jan te Rijdt; Thoth, Bussum - ISBN13 * 978 90 6868 4322, 2006, p. 57
1870's

Art, Drawing

“When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of “Orthodoxy, True and False” and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#172
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Falseness

“Soldiers, by an agreement between General Ironhewer and me, the troops of the Army of Kentucky have surrendered. That we are beaten is a self-evident fact, and we cannot hope to resist the bomb that hangs over our head like the sword of Damocles. Richmond is fallen. The cause for which you have so long and manfully struggled, and for which you have braved dangers and made so many sacrifices, is today hopeless. Reason dictates and humanity demands that no more blood be shed here. It is your sad duty, and mine, to lay down our arms and to aid in restoring peace. As your commander, I sincerely hope that every officer and soldier will carry out in good faith all the terms of the surrender. War such as you have passed through naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. But in captivity and when you return home a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure the respect even of your enemies. In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. I have never sent you where I was unwilling to go myself, nor would I advise you to a course I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers. Preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to me and, I hope, will be magnanimous.”

Harry Turtledove book Settling Accounts: In at the Death

C.S. Army General George S. Patton's final address to the Army of Kentucky in July 1944, p. 339
Settling Accounts: In at the Death (2007)

War, Sadness, Peace, Faith

“"I wish there were no more exams ever," said Kestrel.
"I wish nothing bad happens to Kess," said Bowman.
"I wish my darling children to be safe and happy for ever," said their mother. She always wished like that when she was worried.
"I wish the wind singer would sing again," said their father.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: The "Wind on Fire" Trilogy (2000-2003), The Wind Singer (Book 1), p. 42

Children, Singing, Happiness

“Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime.
I could curse for hours and hours — God help me.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Letter to Edward Garnett, expressing anger that his manuscript for Sons and Lovers was rejected by Heinemann (3 July 1912)

God, Hate, Swine, Help

“That which is known as "meditation" is the act of sustaining an object of meditation and specific subjective aspects by repeatedly focusing your mind upon a virtuous object of meditation. The purpose of this is as follows. From beginningless time you have been under the control of your mind; your mind has not been under your control. Furthermore, your mind tended to be obscured by the afflictions and so forth. Thus meditation aims to bring this mind, which gives rise to all faults and flaws, under control and then it aims to make it servicable. Servicability means that you can direct your mind as you wish toward a virtuous object of meditation.”

Je Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) Tibetan Lama

The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, as translated by Chenmo Translation Committee (2000) p. 99

Affliction, Time

“How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

Star, Solitude

“Our interests require that Egypt should remain what it is, an integral part of the Turkish empire. We do not want it or wish it for ourselves, any more than any rational man with an estate in the North of England and a residence in the South would have wished to possess the inns on the North Road.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Lord Cowley (25 November 1859), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 542.
1850s

Parting

“This time of year, the whole crazy city could go in one big fire storm. There were times that he almost wished that it would. He hated this smoggy, tawdry Babylon of a city, its endless tangle of freeways, the strange-looking houses, the filthy air, the thick, choking, glossy foliage everywhere, the drugs, the booze, the divorces, the laziness, the sleaziness, the porno shops and the naked encounter parlors and the massage joints, the weird people wearing their weird clothes and driving their weird cars and cutting their hair in weird ways. There was a cheapness, a trashiness, about everything here, he thought. Even the mansions and the fancy restaurants were that way: hollow, like slick movie sets. He sometimes felt that the trashiness bothered him more than the out-and-out evil. If you kept sight of your own values you could do battle with evil, but trashiness slipped up around you and infiltrated your soul without your even knowing it. He hoped that his sojourn in Los Angeles was not doing that to him.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Against Babylon (1986), p. 264

Hate, People, Hope, Angels

“If I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these.
Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us — or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen — I hope sooner rather than later!
Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. … Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can't allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet…
The third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years — and half that time, I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country.
I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

90th Birthday Reflections (2007)

Life, Sadness, Peace, Hope

“For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Life, Men, Money, People

“I wish my country were like I wanted it to be, but as it is not, I hope it will one day get to this way of living.”

Harry Schwarz (1924–2010) South African activist

The Mercury (17 November 2009).
Final speech

Hope, Way, Country

“We did not suspend our democracy in our darkest hours why are we suspending it now? the fawning over Thatcher had gone too far. We have had enough of this, It has gone on too long and it has gone too far. This put the tin hat on it the idea that we should suspend a vital part of our democratic process for a party political and private funeral, Mr Churchill didn’t ask for Parliament to be silenced, for confrontations across the House to be forbidden. When our soldiers were being laid waste in the Norway debate, the House of Commons perhaps rose to its finest 20th Century moment. Nobody said: ‘Our armed forces have suffered a disaster, the House of Commons cannot meet, the clash of ideas cannot be heard, we must muffle the drums and silence ourselves The so-called Beast of Bolsover said the argument was about class and that it was "one rule for those at the top and another for those at the bottom. We are here talking about the thing that we sometimes suggest has gone away class, That's what it is, it's about class. It's about the fact that people out there have to live their lives in a different way and there's one rule for those at the top and there's another for those at the bottom. It's never changed, I wish it had, but it hasn't. So when I heard about the chain of events it seemed to grow like topseed - first of all there was going to be some sort of ceremonial funeral, and then the next thing you (Mr Speaker) tell us that the chimes of Big Ben are going to stop and then we hear about the fact that we are going to abandon Prime Minister's question time, I mean, what's it all about? That's why the people out there are angry, a lot of them.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-fawning-gone-far-1836314 George Galloway blasts cancellation of PMQs for Margret Thatchers funeral 16 April, 2013

People, Way, Democracy, Idea

“Our program is simple: we wish to govern Italy. They ask us for programs but there are already too many. It is not programs that are wanting for the salvation of Italy but men and will power.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech at Udine (September 20, 1922) "The Question of Regime. The Monarchy and Fascism," quoted in A History of Civilization (1955) by Crane Brinton, John B. Christopher, and Robert Lee Wolff, p. 520
1920s

Men

“If South Koreans want a league with the North, we Americans can only wish them well. The problem is that the current military alliance may embolden them to take this step without proper thought — and then embolden them to nullify the framework as soon as they sour on it. How the North is likely to respond can be imagined, considering the two deadly acts of aggression that followed the South’s abandonment of the Sunshine Policy in 2008.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Imagination, Problem

“Today no one who wishes to clean even a minimal regard for reason or evidence can espouse racist ideology as it was in its heyday, a system as comprehensive as Marxism and to some clearly equally as satisfying. However, thanks to Jensen and Eysenck and Shockley, the racist can cling to the periphery of his ideology; for example, he can provide a reasoned defence of his position on certain issues such as immigration and foreign policy. I do not wish to minimize the ground he has lost: the retreat from world history to little more than immigration quotas is a great defeat for the racist and a great source of satisfaction for all of his opponents. I am quite convinced that the refutation of racism in the light of reason is almost complete (the effort to eradicate it as a social force is a different matter and may never be fully accomplished). However, the last stand of the racist is not without importance, something I will attempt to demonstrate by giving a racist ideologue his say.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

not referring to any of the above mentioned persons
Source: Race, IQ, and Jensen (1980), p. 8

World, History, Effort, Light

“In this supremacy of tragedy, we find it only in our hearts, to wish that God's curse may overwhelm the treacherous…”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Speaking in elegy regarding the recent death of Michael Collins. From " Poblacht na-Eireann (War News ) No. 47 " Thursday 24 August 1922.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

God, Heart

“Donald Trump: Yeah, I guess so. I wish, uh, I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

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

Interview on Howard Stern Show (11 September 2002), reported by BuzzFeed https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/in-2002-donald-trump-said-he-supported-invading-iraq-on-the? (19 February 2016) 2000s

Time

“If we wished to relate the space of the [Cubist] painters to geometry, we should have to refer it to the non-Euclidean mathematicians; we should have to study, at some length, certain of Riemann's theorems.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

1910s, Du Cubisme (1912)

Study

“I have no wish to argue, Father. Yet it must be said that the monks exist here in peace and security only because of the swords of the defenders. I do not belittle your views — I wish all men shared them. But they do not. … if all men and women lived as you and I, there would be no children, and no humanity. What then would be the Will of the Source?”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 2

Women, Men, Children, Peace

Quotes about wish page 29

Quotes about wish
page 29