Quotes about wish
page 5

“Be content to bless each other, that is all the blessing you need, and how I wish that all blessings were so.”

José Saramago book Baltasar and Blimunda

Abençoem-se antes um ao outro, é quanto basta, pudessem ser todas as bênçãos como essa.
Source: Baltasar and Blimunda (1982), p. 175

“The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man’s wish to rest for a moment — an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

86
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

World, Motivation, Knowledge

“I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Statement by the President on the Occasion of Ramadan (11 August 2010) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/08/11/statement-president-occasion-ramadan 2010

Housing

“President George W. Bush, Mrs. Bush, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends. I'm glad to visit the United States in the lovely season of spring, at your invitation, Mr. President. I wish to convey to the great American people the warm greetings and best wishes of the 1.3 billion Chinese people.”

Hu Jintao (1942) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

2000s, White House speech (2006)

Love, People, Spring, Season

“This book was written in 1920 in the car of a military train and amid the flames of the civil war. The circumstance the reader must keep before his eyes if he wishes rightly to understand not only the basic material of the book, but also its harsh allusion, and particularly the tone in which it is written.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Introduction to the Second English Edition
Terrorism and Communism (1920)

War, Books, Cars, Understanding

“Now, those who were killed and injured here were gunned down by a single killer with a powerful assault weapon. The motives of this killer may have been different than the mass shooters in Aurora or Newtown. But the instruments of death were so similar. And now another 49 innocent people are dead; another 53 are injured; some are still fighting for their lives; some will have wounds that will last a lifetime. We can’t anticipate or catch every single deranged person that may wish to do harm to his neighbors or his friends or his coworkers or strangers. But we can do something about the amount of damage that they do. Unfortunately, our politics have conspired to make it as easy as possible for a terrorist or just a disturbed individual like those in Aurora and Newtown to buy extraordinarily powerful weapons, and they can do so legally.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

In Orlando after the Orlando nightclub shooting ([President Obama: Orlando Families' Grief Is 'Beyond Description', Time, Maya, Rhodan, June 16, 2016, September 2, 2018, http://time.com/4372190/orlando-shooting-barack-obama-joe-biden-grief/]; [‘Our hearts are broken, too’: Obama visits survivors of Orlando rampage, Katie, Zezima, Ellen, Nakashima, Mark, Berman, June 16, 2016, September 2, 2018, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/16/obama-looks-toward-grieving-orlando-in-visit-as-political-showdowns-expand-after-massacre/]; [After meeting with Orlando victims, Obama renews call for gun control, Gregory, Korte, USA Today, June 16, 2016, September 6, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/16/obama-biden-visit-orlando-emotional-visit-after-shooting/85973066/]).
2016, After the Orlando nightclub shooting (June 2016)

Death, People, Motivation, Fight

“Tho' lost to sight, to memory dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope my heart can cheer,—
The hope to meet again.

Oh, fondly on the past I dwell,
And oft recall those hours
When, wandering down the shady dell,
We gathered the wild-flowers.

Yes, life then seemed one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To memory thou art dear.

Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light,
And wish that thou wert by.

I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly loved,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime,
As thro' the fields we roved.”

George Linley (1798–1865) British writer

Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This song was written and composed by Linley for Mr. Augustus Braham, and sung by him. It is not known when it was written,—probably about 1830. Another song, entitled "Though lost to Sight, to Memory dear," was published in London in 1880, purporting to have been written by Ruthven Jenkyns in 1703 and published in the "Magazine for Mariners". That magazine, however, never existed, and the composer of the music acknowledged, in a private letter, that he copied the words from an American newspaper. The reputed author, Ruthven Jenkyns, was living, under another name, in California in 1882.

Love, Life, Smile, Hope

“How are you, doctor, that is what we say when we do not wish to play the weakling, we say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.”

José Saramago book Blindness

Source: Blindness (1995), p. 32

Courage

“"The first time you saw me, I bet you didn't think, He's going to get me killed."
"The first time I saw you, I wished you'd go back to Idris. You know I don't like change."
"I grew on you, though."
"Eventually. Like a moss, or a skin disease."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace Herondale and Alec Lightwood, pg. 437-438
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Disease, Thinking, Change, Time

“I cannot desire any created love, that is, love which can be felt, enjoyed, or understood. I do not wish love that can pass through the intellect, memory, or will; because pure love passes all these things and transcends them”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Life and Doctrine

Love, Memory

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.”

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

Farewell Address, (4 March 1837), recalling what, by then, had reached the status of a proverb.
1830s

People

“What happens when everyone in a society is finally beautiful (and healthy)? When the final aesthetic surgery is developed that will make all visages and bodies "perfect"? Will everyone in that society be happy? In examining the discourses of the late nineteenth century on this question, we are confronted with the paradox of François Xavier Bichat, as paraphrased by Charles Darwin: "If everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici (de Milo), we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.””

Sander Gilman (1944) American historian

The very search for the improvement of the body (and the concomitant “happiness” of the psyche) must lead to further discontent.
page 39.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)

Women, Beauty, Search, Question

“The bourgeoisie today is a falling class. … By its imperialist methods of appropriation [it] is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), p. 83

World, Tear

“He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.”

Alfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex

Last words in Blostman [Blooms] (c. 895 AD) an anthology, based largely on the Soliloquies of Augustine of Hippo.

Life, World, Understanding

“If, being duke and peer, you would not be contented with my standing uncovered before you, but should also wish that I should esteem you, I should ask you to show me the qualities that merit my esteem. If you did this, you would gain it, and I could not refuse it to you with justice; but if you did not do it, you would be unjust to demand it of me; and assuredly you would not succeed, were you the greatest prince in the world.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

World, Justice

“When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Our Sexual Ethics http://www.utilitarian.org/texts/oursexethics.html (1936) 1930s

Marriage, Children, Family, Sex

“As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District. Its most recent burial, only last Term, was, to be sure, not fully six feet under: Our decision in Lee v. Weisman conspicuously avoided using the supposed test but also declined the invitation to repudiate it. Over the years, however, no fewer than five of the currently sitting Justices have, in their own opinions, personally driven pencils through the creature's heart (the author of today's opinion repeatedly), and a sixth has joined an opinion doing so. The secret of the Lemon test's survival, I think, is that it is so easy to kill. It is there to scare us (and our audience) when we wish it to do so, but we can command it to return to the tomb at will. Such a docile and useful monster is worth keeping around, at least in a somnolent state; one never knows when one might need him.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384, 398-99 (1993) (concurring) (citations omitted).
1990s

Children, Secret, School, Justice

“They live a life of fear and insecurity
And all you do is pay for their prosperity
The ministry of fear that won't let you live
The ministry of grace that doesn't forgive
Do what you will to try and make me conform
I'll make you wish that you had never been born”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Rock and Roll Rebel.
Song lyrics, Bark at the Moon (1983)

Life, Fear, Forgiveness

“Watch well each separate citizen,
Lest having in his heart of hearts
A secret spear, one still may come
Saluting you with cheerful face,
And utter with a double tongue
The feigned good wishes of his wary mind.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Diogenes Laërtius (trans. C. D. Yonge) The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (1853), "Solon", sect. 13, p. 29.

Secret, Heart

“I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to that or some truer method of philosophy.”

Isaac Newton book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Preface
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

Hope, Search, Nature, Light

“The point at which life becomes 'worthless,' and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become 'extraordinary' or 'inappropriate,' are neither set forth in the Constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory…[therefore] even when it is demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that a patient no longer wishes certain measures to be taken to preserve her life, it is up to the citizens of Missouri to decide, through their elected representatives, whether that wish will be honored.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On the court's lack of authority regarding the right to die: Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=497&invol=261&friend=oyez (1990) (concurring). 1990s

Life, People, Justice

“He neither seeks nor avoids talking about his enemies. When he does speak of them, it is with pride without disdain, humor without rancor, reproach without bitterness, frankness without spite. And in the same way, he speaks of his rivals for glory only with deserved praises that conceal no hidden venom, which can certainly not be said of the praise they sometimes give him. But what I find in him that is most rare in an Author and and even in a sensitive man is the most perfect tolerance in matters of feelings and opinions, and the putting aside of all partisan spirit, even in his own favor; wanting freely to state his opinion and his reasons when the issue demands it, and even doing so with passion when his heart is agitated; but not blaming people for not adopting what he feels any more than he puts up with anyone's wish to deprive him of his feeling; and giving everyone the same freedom of thought as he insists on having for himself. I hear everyone talk about tolerance, but he is the only truly tolerant person I have known.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

People, Way, Feeling, Freedom

“I wish it might be more generally and universally understood what the country is now engaged in. We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment

Children, Question, Universe, Country

“Are you going to offer yourselves here to the weapons of the enemy, undefended, unavenged? Why is it then you have arms? And why have you undertaken an offensive war? You who are ever turbulent in peace, and laggard in war. What hopes have you in standing here? Do you expect that some god will protect you and bear you hence? A way is to be made with the sword. Come you, who wish to behold your homes, your parents, your wives, and your children; follow me in the way in which you shall see me lead you on. It is not a wall or rampart that blocks your path, but armed men like yourselves. Their equals in courage, you are their superiors by force of necessity, which is the last and greatest weapon.”
Vos telis hostium estis indefensi, inulti? quid igitur arma habetis, aut quid ultro bellum intulistis, in otio tumultuosi, in bello segnes? quid hic stantibus spei est? an deum aliquem protecturum uos rapturumque hinc putatis? ferro via facienda est. hac qua me praegressum uideritis, agite, qui uisuri domos parentes coniuges liberos estis, ite mecum. non murus nec uallum sed armati armatis obstant. virtute pares, necessitate, quae ultimum ac maximum telum est, superiores estis'.

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book IV, sec. 28
History of Rome

Men, God, War, Children

“How thick the fog is. I can't see the road. All the people in the world could pass by and I would never know. I wish it was always that way. It's getting dark already. It will soon be night, thank goodness.”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 104 (Act 3)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)

People, World, Way, Night

“I wish you would recollect that Painting and Punctuality mix like Oil and Vinegar, and that Genius and regularity are utter Enemies.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote of Gainsborough in a 'Letter to Edward Stratford' (a patron), 1 May 1772
1770 - 1788

Painting

“Today we have done what we had to do. If necessary, we shall do it again. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and I wish it were otherwise… When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world on the direct orders of a hostile regime, we will respond so long as I'm in this Oval Office. Self-defense is not only our right; it is our duty. … Despite our repeated warnings, Qadhafi continued his reckless policy of intimidation, his relentless pursuit of terror. He counted on America to be passive. He counted wrong.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Address to the Nation on the United States Air Strike Against Libya http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/41486g.htm (14 April 1986) 1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Hostility, Pleasure, World

“If you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Rumi Daylight (1990)

“I understand his longing for immortality … Willy's writing his name in a cake of ice on a hot day, but he wishes he were writing in stone.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

On Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, as quoted in The New York Times (9 May 1984)

Understanding

“All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Mythopoeia (1931)

Pain, Evil

“As for the soul: why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Pak, and the soul slips in. Mrs Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle. None in mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content – almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I'm ever bored. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say 'This is it'? What is it? And shall I die before I can find it? Then (as I was walking through Russell Square last night) I see mountains in the sky: the great clouds, and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is 'it' – A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too. Who am I, what am I, and so on; these questions are always floating about in me. Is that what I meant to say? Not in the least. I was thinking about my own character; not about the universe. Oh and about society again; dining with Lord Berners at Clive's made me think that. How, at a certain moment, I see through what I'm saying; detest myself; and wish for the other side of the moon; reading alone, that is.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Saturday 27 February 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Truth, Books, Soul

“This context enables us to understand the passionate affection in which the poets of the New Comedy held Euripides; so that we are no longer startled by the desire of Philemon, who wished to be hanged at once so that he might meet Euripides in the underworld, so long as he could be sure that the deceased was still in full possession of his senses.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Bei diesem Zusammenhange ist die leidenschaftliche Zuneigung begreiflich, welche die Dichter der neueren Komödie zu Euripides empfanden; so dass der Wunsch des Philemon nicht weiter befremdet, der sich sogleich aufhängen lassen mochte, nur um den Euripides in der Unterwelt aufsuchen zu können: wenn er nur überhaupt überzeugt sein dürfte, dass der Verstorbene auch jetzt noch bei Verstande sei.
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 55

Understanding, Sense, Passion

“Wishes which cannot be fulfilled are said to be “pious.” It is assumed, apparently, that only profane wishes are fulfilled.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Unerreichbare Wünsche werden als »fromm« bezeichnet. Man scheint anzunehmen, dass nur die profanen in Erfüllung gehen.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 27.

“It is by a blend of lively curiosity and intelligent selfishness that the artists who wish to mature late, who feel too old to die, the Goethes, Tolstoys, Voltaires, Titians and Verdis, reach a fruitful senescence. They cannot afford to associate with those who are burning themselves up or preparing for a tragedy or whom melancholy has marked for her own. Not for them the accident-prone, the friend in whom the desire for self-destruction keeps blistering out in broken legs or threatening them in anxiety-neuroses. Not for them the drumming finger, the close-cropt nail, the chewed glasses, the pause on the threshold, the wandering eye, or the repeated ‘um’ and ‘er.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 16: Outlook Unsettled (p. 137)

Feeling, Intelligence, Selfishness

“Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Letter to Alexander H. Stephens (1860)

People, Fear, Hope

“If you wish to thoroughly accustom yourself to correct and good positions for your fingers, fasten a frame or a loom divided into squares by threads between your eye and the nude figure which you are representing, and then make the same squares upon the paper where you wish to draw the said nude but very faintly. You should then put a pellet of wax on a part of the network to serve as a mark which as you look at your model should always cover the pit of the throat, or if he should have turned his back make it cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. …The squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the network in proportion as you wish your figure to be less than life size…”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Life, Parting, Drawing

“The reason that I call my doctrine logical atomism is because the atoms that I wish to arrive at as the sort of last residue in analysis are logical atoms and not physical atoms. Some of them will be what I call "particulars" – such things as little patches of color or sounds, momentary things – and some of them will be predicates or relations and so on.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1910s, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)

Color

“In a year and a half," "China will be sufficiently reunited to allow me to take my trip around the world. I wish to take Madam Wu and an entourage of about thirty persons, engaging expert guides in each country to instruct me in its governmental and industrial methods.”

Wu Peifu (1878–1939) Chinese general

In the Land of the Laughing Buddha – The Adventures of an American Barbarian in China, Upton Close, 2007, READ BOOKS, 354, 1-4067-1675-8, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=DpQa22PJutwC&pg=RA1-PA266&dq=ma+fu-hsiang&hl=en&ei=DnszTJc6wd-WB4uS7b4L&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6AEwADgU#v=snippet&q=In%20a%20year%20and%20a%20half%20China%20will%20be%20sufficiently%20reunited%20to%20allow%20me%20to%20take%20my%20trip%20around%20the%20world.&f=false, In the Land of the Laughing Buddha – The Adventures of an American Barbarian in China, Upton Close, 2007, READ BOOKS, 355, 1-4067-1675-8, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=DpQa22PJutwC&pg=RA1-PA266&dq=ma+fu-hsiang&hl=en&ei=DnszTJc6wd-WB4uS7b4L&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6AEwADgU#v=onepage&q=country%20to%20instruct%20me%20in%20its%20governmental%20and%20industrial%20methods&f=false,

World, Personality, Country

“Little effort was made to explain Saddam's culpability, his misuse of Iraqi resources, or the fact that we were not embargoing medicine or food. I was exasperated that our TV was showing what amounted to Iraqi propaganda… I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply by meeting his obligations. Instead, I said the following: 'I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.' As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong. Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one's fault but my own.”

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

Comment on Stahl interview in Madam Secretary (2003), pp. 274-275
2000s

People, Food, Question, Thinking

“Nothing is more miserable than those people who never failed to attack their own salvation. When there was need to observe the Law, they trampled it under foot. … On this account Stephen said: "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, you always resist the Holy Spirit", not only by transgressing the Law but also by wishing to observe it at the wrong time.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Saint John Chrysostom (349–ca. 407), Eight Homilies Against the Jews http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.html, Homily 1

People, Law, Time, Heart

“You used to call me your dreamer,
And now I'm living out my dreams;
Oh, how I wish you could see,
Everything that's happening for me.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

I Miss You, her character's guitar piece for Hannah Montana and in reality dedicated to her late grandfather Ron Cyrus
Song lyrics

Dreams

“Flattering as it may be to the human mind, & truly honorable as it is to receive from our fellow citizens testimonies of approbation for exertions to promote the public welfare; it is not less pleasing to know that the milder virtues of the heart are highly respected by a society whose liberal principles must be founded in the immediate laws of truth and justice. To enlarge the sphere of social happiness is worthy the benevolent design of the Masonic Institution; and it is most fervently to be wished, that the conduct of every member of the fraternity, as well as those publications which discover the principles which actuate them may tend to convince Mankind that the grand object of Masonry is to promote the happiness of the human race.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to the Grand Lodge of Free Masons of Massachusetts (27 December 1792) https://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/docs/86/Letter_from_George_Washington_to_the_Grand_Master_of_Free_Mas_1.html, published in The Writings Of George Washington (1835) by Jared Sparks, p. 201 1790s

Truth, Justice, Law, Heart

“Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition, and ambition can easily have caused the inspiration or what we thought to be inspiration. But reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition. He tumbles where his vehement drive calls him; no longer does he choose his position, but rather chance and luster determine it.
Then we are not called to the position where we can most shine. It is not the one which, in the long succession of years during which we may hold it, will never make us weary, subdue our zeal, or dampen our inspiration. Soon we shall see our wishes unfulfilled and our ideas unsatisfied.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 36
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

Idea, Chance, Success

“I tell the story of these philosophers in simplified form: I merely wish to bring out in each system that point which represents a piece of the personality, and which history must preserve as a part of what is irrefutable and indisputable.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous)

History, Parting, Personality

“The Faith you mention has doubtless its use in the World. I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would I endeavour to lessen it in any Man. But I wish it were more productive of good Works, than I have generally seen it: I mean real good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit; not Holiday-keeping, Sermon-Reading or Hearing; performing Church Ceremonies, or making long Prayers, filled with Flatteries and Compliments, despis’d even by wise Men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is a Duty; the hearing and reading of Sermons may be useful; but, if Men rest in Hearing and Praying, as too many do, it is as if a Tree should Value itself on being water’d and putting forth Leaves, tho’ it never produc’d any Fruit.”

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

Letter to Joseph Huey (6 June 1753); published in Albert Henry Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, volume 3, p. 145.
Epistles

Men, God, World, Faith

“I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.”

Mark Twain book The Innocents Abroad

Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 42

“Now, on other hand, as President, I cannot just impose my will on Congress -- the Congress of the United States -- even though sometimes I wish I could. The legislative branch has its own powers and its own prerogatives, and so they check my power and balance my power. I appoint some of our judges, but I cannot tell them how to rule, because every person in America -- from a child living in poverty to me, the President of the United States -- is equal under the law. And a judge can make a determination as to whether or not I am upholding the law or breaking the law. And I am fully accountable to that law.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Yangon University Speech (November 2012)

Law, Personality

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

XI, 14
Confessions (c. 397)

Time

“Tragically, the rights of those who were here long before us were not always respected. For those peoples and their nations, from the heart of American democracy, I wish to reaffirm my highest esteem and appreciation. Those first contacts were often turbulent and violent, but it is difficult to judge the past by the criteria of the present. Nonetheless, when the stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our 'neighbors' and everything around us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2010s, Address to the United States Congress

People, Education, Error, Democracy

“Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,

And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,

Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!”

Al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Medieval Arab philosopher

As quoted in "The Meditations of Al-Maʿarri", Studies in Islamic Poetry (1921) by R. A. Nicholson, Verse 197, pp. 134–135

Food, Way, Flowers, Bird

“The old Romans all wished to have a king over them because they had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book I, sec. 17
History of Rome

Freedom

“Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), ch. XII : Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
Misattributed
Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Criminal_Minds_(season_1) Criminal Minds] ("L.D.S.K." - season 1, episode 6).

“I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet — or unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged. Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are — when they're in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that's irresponsible, or — but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States. And I think the Internet has become an even more powerful tool for that kind of citizen participation.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Interview in Shanghai, as quoted in China Daily (17 November 2009)
2009, Town Hall meeting in Shanghai (November 2009)

People, Truth, Democracy, Nature

“Comrades, I took the red tram of socialism to the stop called Independence, and that's where I got off. You may keep on to the final stop if you wish, but from now on let's address each other 'Mister' [rather than continue using the socialist term of address, 'Comrade']!”

Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) Polish politician and Prime Minister

Attributed

“In my actual imaginative contact with life, I am vastly more responsive to beauty than to horror—indeed, I never experience real cosmic horror except in infrequent nightmares. However, when I come to record my various imaginative experiences, I generally find that only the horror items have any uniqueness or originality. Others have seen the same beautiful things that I have seen, & have sung them more nobly. Dunsany, indeed, has said exquisitely almost everything I could possibly wish to say; so that when I indulge in sheer phantasy I can do no more than imitate him. Thus horror alone is left as my peculiar kingdom, & in it I must hold my lowly reproduction of a Plutonian court.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 316-317
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Beauty, Imagination

“It is a crime that those people who wish to see a generous France take her place as leader of all the free and just nations are being accused of fomenting turmoil in the country, denounced by the very plotters who are conniving so shamelessly to foist this miscarriage of justice on the entire world. It is a crime to lie to the public, to twist public opinion to insane lengths in the service of the vilest death-dealing machinations. It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to that odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.
Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored!”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

Love, Death, God, People

“I shall not find a painting more beautiful because the artist has painted a hawthorn in the foreground, though I know of nothing more beautiful than the hawthorn, for I wish to remain sincere and because I know that the beauty of a painting does not depend on the things represented in it. I shall not collect images of hawthorn. I do not venerate hawthorn, I go to see and smell it.”

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French novelist, critic, and essayist

Preface (1910) to The Bible of Amiens by John Ruskin, translated by Proust (1904); from Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin, trans. Jean Autret and Philip J. Wolfe (Yale University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-300-04503-4, p. 57

Beauty, Painting, Dependency, Sincerity

“…now…that I am a wise person. As for me, I wish there were some more of us in the world, for I find it lonesome.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 281

World, Personality

“A kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all Italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the 'scuole'. The 'scuole' are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. Amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. Every Sunday at the church of each of the four 'scuole', during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in Italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure. Carrio and I never failed being present at these vespers of the 'Mendicanti', and we were not alone. The church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. What vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. I talked of nothing else. One day I spoke of it at Le Blond's; "If you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. I am one of the administrators of the house, I will give you a collation [light meal] with them." I did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. In entering the saloon, which contained these beauties I so much sighed to see, I felt a trembling of love which I had never before experienced. M. le Blond presented to me one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which I was acquainted. Come, Sophia, — she was horrid. Come, Cattina, — she had but one eye. Come, Bettina, — the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. Scarcely one of them was without some striking defect.
Le Blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; I was almost in despair. During the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and I found they possessed them. I said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that I left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. I had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. But after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. I still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, I obstinately continued to think them beautiful.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), On the musicians of the Ospedale della Pieta (book VII)

Love, Marriage, Age, World

“The female defects – greed, hate, and delusion and other defilements – are greater than the male’s…You [women] should have such an intention…Because I wish to be freed from the impurities of the woman’s body, I will acquire the beautiful and fresh body of a man.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Saint Augustine as quoted by Dr Bettany Hughes Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11785181/Feminism-started-with-the-Buddha-and-Confucius-25-centuries-ago.html Disputed

Women, Hate, Beauty

“Never mind, I'll find someone like you,
I wish nothing but the best for you, too.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead."”

Adele (singer) (1988) British singer-songwriter

Someone Like You, written by Adele and Dan Wilson
Song lyrics, 21 (2011)

Love, Hurt, Forgetting

“I was behind a woman at the checkout counter who was looking at the magazines. She turned to me and goes, 'There he is again, that Leonardo DiCaprio. Don't you wish he'd just disappear?' I said, this is the moment where I either go, 'Do you know who I am?' or put my hat further down, pay for my corn-nuts and get out of there…. I choose to avoid that.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

2005
http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes

“We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 215

Faith

“No practical biologist interested in sexual reproduction would be led to work out the detailed consequences experienced by organisms having three or more sexes; yet what else should he do if he wishes to understand why the sexes are, in fact, always two?”

Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection

Preface, p. ix.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)

Sex, Understanding

“to all the haters out there i wish u the best. U cant bring me down. I wake up everyday grateful 4 the opportunity and grateful to the fans”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Message to his fans via Twitter https://twitter.com/justinbieber/status/12185092089, 14 April, 2010

“This took me completely by surprise. Since July 20, 1944, I had not spoken to Hitler at all except at some large gathering. … I had never received any hint on the subject from anyone else…. I assumed that Hitler had nominated me because he wished to clear the way to enable an officer of the Armed Forces to put an end to the war. That this assumption was incorrect I did not find out until the winter of 1945-46 in Nuremberg, when for the first time I heard the provisions of Hitler's will…. When I read the signal I did not for a moment doubt that it was my duty to accept the task … it had been my constant fear that the absence of any central authority would lead to chaos and the senseless and purposeless sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives … I realized … that the darkest moment in any fighting man's life, the moment when he must surrender unconditionally, was at hand. I realized, too, that my name would remain forever associated with the act and that hatred and distortion of facts would continue to try and besmirch my honor. But duty demanded that I pay no attention to any such considerations. My policy was simple — to try and save as many lives as I could …”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

April 30, 1945, quoted in "Memoirs: Ten Years And Twenty Days" - Page 442 - by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz - History - 1997.

Life, War, Fear, Way

“I, Titian of Cadore, having studied painting from childhood upwards, and desirous of fame rather than profit, wish to serve the Doge and Signori, rather than his Highness the Pope and other Signori, who in past days, and even now, have urgently asked to employ me: I am therefore anxious, if it should appear feasible, to paint in the Hall of Council, beginning, if it please their sublimity, with the canvas of 'The Battle' on the side towards the Piazza, which is so difficult that no one as yet has had courage to attempt it…”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

Quote from a petition presented by Titian, and read on the 31st of May, 1513, before the Council of ten of Venice; as quoted by J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle in Titian his life and times - With some account..., publisher John Murray, London, 1877, p. 153-154
The chiefs of the Council on the day in question accepted Titian's offer. Sharp monitions reminded him in 1518, 1522 and 1537 that he should complete 'The Battle', he did not until 1539
1510-1540
Source: http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article/titians_battle_of_cadore_1538-9

Courage, Study, Appearance, Past

“It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Self-directedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 96

Love

“Existence is so bitter for every one of us! Ought we not forgive others much, my friend, if we wish to be forgiven ourselves?”

Emile Zola book Nana

Nana (1880).

Forgiveness

“One cannot love anybody without turning away from oneself. However, the crucial question is whether this movement is prompted by the desire to turn toward a positive value, or whether the intention is a radical escape from oneself. “Love” of the second variety is inspired by self-hatred, by hatred of one’s own weakness and misery. The mind is always on the point of departing for distant places. Afraid of seeing itself and its inferiority, it is driven to give itself to the other—not because of his worth, but merely for the sake of his “otherness.” Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”— the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems. Looking away from oneself is here mistaken for love! Isn’t it abundantly clear that “altruism,” the interest in “others” and their lives, has nothing at all to do with love? The malicious or envious person also forgets his own interest, even his “preservation.” He only thinks about the other man’s feelings, about the harm and the suffering he inflicts on him. Conversely, there is a form of genuine “self-love” which has nothing at all to do with “egoism.” It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Selfdirectedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Love, People, Feeling, Question

“I have no wish to believe on that subject.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Last words (June 1809), as quoted in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man https://books.google.com/books?id=0SKFXdyu8NoC&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=%22POPISH+STUFF%22+PAINE&source=bl&ots=zo5gRksBtU&sig=RY-gWE_UoreJyKW2iUdTSkuDVQg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHi9W1mcrLAhWFnYMKHYMsCfQQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22POPISH%20STUFF%22%20PAINE&f=false, by Christopher Hitchens, p. 140 1800s

“The black earth drinks, in turn
The trees drink up the earth.
The sea the torrents drinks, the sun the sea,
And the moon drinks the sun.
Why, comrades, do ye flout me,
If I, too, wish to drink?”

Anacreon (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns

Variant: Fruitful earth drinks up the rain, Trees from earth drink that again; The sea too drinks the air, the sun Drinks the sea, and him the moon. Is it reason, then, do ye think, That I should thirst when all else drink?
Source: Odes, 21.

Drink, Tree, Sun, Sea

“There is a strange kind of tragic enigma associated with the problem of racism. No one, or almost no one, wishes to see themselves as racist; still racism persists, real and tenacious.”

Albert Memmi (1920) French writer

Racism (1982)

Problem

“The Author of the piece, is entitled to much credit for the goodness of his Pen: and I could wish he had as much credit for the rectitude of his Heart — for, as Men see thro’ different Optics, and are induced by the reflecting faculties of the Mind, to use different means to attain the same end; the Author of the Address, should have had more charity, than to mark for Suspicion, the Man who should recommend Moderation and longer forbearance — or, in other words, who should not think as he thinks, and act as he advises. But he had another plan in view, in which candor and liberality of Sentiment, regard to justice, and love of Country, have no part; and he was right, to insinuate the darkest suspicion, to effect the blackest designs.
That the Address is drawn with great art, and is designed to answer the most insidious purposes. That it is calculated to impress the Mind, with an idea of premeditated injustice in the Sovereign power of the United States, and rouse all those resentments which must unavoidably flow from such a belief. That the secret Mover of this Scheme (whoever he may be) intended to take advantage of the passions, while they were warmed by the recollection of past distresses, without giving time for cool, deliberative thinking, & that composure of Mind which is so necessary to give dignity & stability to measures, is rendered too obvious, by the mode of conducting the business, to need other proof than a reference to the proceeding.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1780s, The Newburgh Address (1783)

Love, Men, Secret, Justice

“What I now heard so graphically at first-hand, though it was really no more than a detailed confirmation of what my uncle had written, excited me afresh; for I felt sure that I was on the track of a very real, very secret, and very ancient religion whose discovery would make me an anthropologist of note. My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, as l wish it still were, and I discounted with almost inexplicable perversity the coincidence of the dream notes and odd cuttings collected by Professor Angell.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Secret, Religion, Dreams, Angels

“Leave off wishing to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking that anyone can ever become grateful.”
Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri, Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium.

Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus

LXXIII, lines 1–2
Carmina

Thinking

“Self-mastery is attained when the imagination has been directed and trained to conform with our desires-for although, in one sense, the imagination is inclined in the subconscious, yet it dominates the latter, and therefore, if we know how to guide it, our subconscious self will take charge of our material being and do its work just as we wish it to be done; or, in other words, exactly in conformity with our conscious suggestions.”

Emile Coué (1857–1926) French psychologist and pharmacist

Source: Autosuggestion : My method (2014), Chapter II. The role of imagination.

Imagination, Sense, Training

“If by "democracy" we mean the form which the Third Estate as such wishes to impart to public life as a whole, it must be concluded that democracy and plutocracy are the same thing under the two aspects of wish and actuality, theory and practice, knowing and doing. It is the tragic comedy of the world‑ improvers' and freedom‑ teachers' desperate fight against money that they are ipso facto assisting money to be effective. Respect for the big number—expressed in the principles of equality for all, natural rights, and universal suffrage—is just as much a class‑ ideal of the unclassed as freedom of public opinion (and more particularly freedom of the press) is so. These are ideals, but in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune. The representatives of the ideas look at one side only, while the representatives of money operate with the other. The concepts of Liberalism and Socialism are set in effective motion only by money. … There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money—and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Source: Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 401–02 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.49906/page/n893/mode/2up Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Welthistorische Perspektiven (1922) The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Democracy, Freedom, Money, Question

“You can't just wish change; you have to live the change in order for it to become a reality.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 61

Reality, Change

“Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA — ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

This quotation has not been confirmed to come from Himmler, its attribution to him on the Internet coming from some point before 2000, as in the Site of the Sentient quotelist http://web.archive.org/web/20000823073240/http://www.siteofthesentient.com/alltags.html Disputed

“But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences. Not many years ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word interests to stampede millions of people into voting against him, because anything associated with "the interests" seemed necessary corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action.
By playing upon a old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass group emotions.”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Page 74
Propaganda (1928)

People, Idea, Thinking, Personality

“The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Letter to William H Herndon (10 July 1848)
1840s

Way

“With the destructive power of today's weapons, keeping the peace is not just a goal; it's a sacred obligation. But maintaining peace requires more than sincerity and idealism—more than optimism and good will. As you know well, peace is a product of hard, strenuous labor by those dedicated to its preservation. It requires realism, not wishful thinking.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

"Toasts of the President and United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar at a Luncheon in New York City " (17 June 1982); online at The American Presidency Project by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=42646 1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Peace, Optimism, Thinking, Sincerity

“Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)

“Heretics cannot themselves appear good unless they depict the Church as evil, false, and mendacious. They alone wish to be esteemed as the good, but the Church must be made to appear evil in every respect.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Dictata super Psalterium (Dictations on the Psalter). This is Luther's first major work from the years 1513 to 1515. (See What Luther Says, Ewald Martin Plass, ed., vol. 3, p. 1590. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&tbs=bks%3A1&q=%22This+is+Luther%27s+first+major+work.+It+was+begun+in+the+summer+of+1513%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=) Denifle, Heinrich, Luther and Lutherdom http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029249567, p. 15; primary source: D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe, Weimar, Herman Bohlau, 1883, Vol. 3, p. 445. http://books.google.com/books?id=9YkVtSs8WdUC&pg=PA1&dq=%22Dictata+Super+Psalterium%22&hl=en&ei=Ms4qTJ3VGIe5nAewp8iqAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=%22Dictata%20Super%20Psalterium%22&f=false

Appearance, Evil, Falseness

“After having met God, my life that was so worthless before has been transformed, and the land of my hometown that used to be so worthless has now been transformed into the priceless Natural Temple, Wolmyeongdong. In the same way, I wish that everyone will transform and succeed!”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from the Official English Website on Jung Myung Seok http://jungmyungseok.net/wolmyeongdong/ Wolmyeongdong refers to Jung Myung Seok’s hometown that was transformed into a Natural Temple for God. http://wolmyeongdong.org

Life, God, Way, Nature

“"Maybe you should try looking a little less smug about what you did last night."
"I do not look smug. Well, no more than usual."
"Please, I can read your face like a very open, very pornographic book. I wish I couldn't."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Alec Lightwood and Jace Heronale, pg. 535
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Books, Reading, Night

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

" My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (December 7, 2006).

Love, Life, People, Books

“I bid you farewell, sincerely wishing, that as men and christians, ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

Men, Sincerity

“Take a piece of glass of the size of a half sheet of royal folio paper, and fix it… between your eye and the object you wish to portray. Then move it away until your eye is two-thirds of a braccio away from the piece of glass, and fasten your head by means of an instrument in such a way as to prevent any movement of it whatsoever. Then close or cover up one eye, and with a brush or a piece of red chalk finely ground mark out on the glass what is visible beyond it; afterwards, copy it by tracing on paper from the glass, then prick it out upon paper of a better quality and paint it if you so desire, paying special attention to the aerial perspective.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Way, Painting

“Most emphatically I do wish that the people should have the right to recall the decision, and authoritatively to stamp with disapproval what cannot but seem to the ordinary plain citizen a monstrous misconstruction of the constitution, a monstrous perversion of the constitution into an instrument for the perpetuation of social and industrial wrong and for the oppression of the weak and helpless.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)

People, Decision

“It is part of a work to which if ever it should be compleated I intend to give some such title as Principles of Legal Policy; the object of it is to trace out a new model for the Laws: of my own country you may imagine, in the first place: but keeping those of other countries all along in view. To ascertain what the Laws ought to be, in form and tenor as well as in matter: and that elsewhere as well as here. All that I shall say to recommend it to you is that I have taken counsel of you much oftener than of our own Ld. Coke and Hale and Blackstone. The repose of Grotius and Puffendorf and Barbeyrac and Burlamaqui I would never wish to see disturbed. I have built solely on the foundation of utility, laid as it is by Helvetius. Becarria has been lucrative pedibus, or if you please manibus, meis.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Letter to Voltaire (c. November 1776), quoted in Timothy L. S. Sprigge (ed.), The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (London: University College London Press, 2017), p. 367

Law, Imagination, Parting, Country