Quotes about witness

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The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

1860s, Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831), Chapter 10.

Deputy Governor Danforth
The Crucible (1953)

Section 99
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Part I : The Child's Part in World Reconstruction, p. 9
The Absorbent Mind (1949)

The Power of Now (1997)

Que les gens d'esprit sont bêtes.
Act I, scene i. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 883-86.
Le Barbier de Séville (1773)

Conspiracy of Kindness : A Refreshing New Approach to Sharing the Love of Jesus With Others (1993) by Steve Sjogren, p. 120.
Disputed, Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.

Enemies, A Love Story (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1972), p. 257

Prefatory Remarks
The Philosophical Letters

“Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. v

Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), p. 139

Beware of Pity (1939)

May 1, 1972, House of Commons.

"Angelus", in Saint Peter's Square (14 December 2014) http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/angelus/2014/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20141214.html
2010s, 2014

Orignially written as part of an "Essay on Modern Poets" this was published as a "Fragment on Whitman” (c. 1912) in The Ancient Track (2001) edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 192
Non-Fiction

Annie Besant, An Autobiography Chapter XIV

Quoted in The New York Times Biographical Service, Vol. I (1970), p. 294 (said by Russell "in the spring of 1967")
1960s

G.K. Gokhale urged her to join the Indian Independence Movement quoted in [Naravane, Vishwanath S., Sarojini Naidu: An Introduction to Her Life, Work and Poetry, http://books.google.com/books?id=h6v8HsRUBucC&pg=PA133, 1 January 1996, Orient Blackswan, 978-81-250-0931-3, 133]

Personal Quotes 2009–2012
Source: https://twitter.com/chriscolfer, Chris Colfer's personal twitter account.

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Occupation, vol. 3, Society in America (1837).

Remark to James Mackintosh on October 6, 1830, reported in his posthumous memoir, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, Vol. 2 (1836), p. 472 http://books.google.com/books?id=wHM4AAAAYAAJ&q=%22one+man's+wit+and+all+men's+wisdom%22&pg=PA472#v=onepage
Variant: [A proverb is] the wisdom of many and the wit of one.

Response to observations made in In A Minor Key by Charles D. Isaacson, in The Conservative, Vol. I, No. 2, (1915), p. 4
Non-Fiction

Novalis (1829)
Context: The ideal of Morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest Strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named (very falsely as it was there meant) the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage; and has, in these times, gained, precisely among the greatest weaklings, very many proselytes. By this ideal, man becomes a Beast-Spirit, a Mixture; whose brutal wit has, for weaklings, a brutal power of attraction.

Thomas Salusbury translation (1661) p. 301 as quoted by Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
Context: I cannot sufficiently admire the eminence of those men's wits, that have received and held it to be true, and with the sprightliness of their judgments offered such violence to their own senses, as that they have been able to prefer that which their reason dictated to them, to that which sensible experiments represented most manifestly to the contrary.... I cannot find any bounds for my admiration, how that reason was able in Aristarchus and Copernicus, to commit such a rape on their senses, as in despite thereof to make herself mistress of their credulity.

2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)
Context: Each time we gather to inaugurate a President we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Context: To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea, — an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day, — I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn?
Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights; that property and robbery are synonymous terms; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.

The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: The world stretches out before me, the vast world of the big, the little, and the medium. Universe of kings and presidents and jailors, of mandarins and pariahs and liberators and liberated, of judges and witnesses and the condemned: stars of the first, second, third and nth magnitudes, planets, comets, bodies errant and eccentric or routine and domesticated by the laws of gravity, the subtle laws of falling, all keeping step, all turning slowly or rapidly around a void. Where they claim the central sun lies, the solar being, the hot beam made out of every human gaze, there is nothing but a hole and less than a hole: the eye of a dead fish, the giddy cavity of the eye that falls into itself and looks at itself without seeing. There is nothing with which to fill the hollow center of the whirlwind. The springs are smashed, the foundations collapsed, the visible or invisible bonds that joined one star to another, one body to another, one man to another, are nothing but a tangle of wires and thorns, a jungle of claws and teeth that twist us and chew us and spit us out and chew us again. No one hangs himself by the rope of a physical law. The equations fall tirelessly into themselves.
And in regard to the present matter, if the present matters: I do not belong to the masters. I don't wash my hands of it, but I am not a judge, nor a witness for the prosecution, nor an executioner. I do not torture, interrogate, or suffer interrogation. I do not loudly plead for leniency, nor wish to save myself or anyone else. And for all that I don't do and for all that they do to us, I neither ask forgiveness nor forgive. Their piety is as abject as their justice. Am I innocent? I'm guilty. Am I guilty? I'm innocent. (I'm innocent when I'm guilty, guilty when I'm innocent. I'm guilty when … but that is another song. Another song? It's all the same song.) Guilty innocent, innocent guilty, the fact is I quit.

Book II, 1389b.11
Rhetoric

1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment
Context: I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

Speech at MIT (1985), referring to his brother Bernard Vonnegut, and the choices available to scientists and the intelligent, to serve humanity, or to betray it, as published in Fates Worse Than Death (1991), Ch. 12
Various interviews
Context: My brother got his doctorate in 1938, I think. If he had gone to work in Germany after that, he would have been helping to make Hitler's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in Italy, he would have been helping to make Mussolini's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in Japan, he would have been helping to make Tojo's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in the Soviet Union, he would have been helping to make Stalin's dreams come true. He went to work for a bottle manufacturer in Butler, Pennsylvania, instead. It can make quite a difference not just to you but to humanity: the sort of boss you choose, whose dreams you help come true.
Hitler dreamed of killing Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, mental defectives, believers in democracy, and so on, in industrial quantities. It would have remained only a dream if it hadn't been for chemists as well educated as my brother, who supplied Hitler's executioners with the cyanide gas known as Zyklon B. It would have remained only a dream if architects and engineers as capable as my father and grandfather hadn't designed extermination camps — the fences, the towers, the barracks, the railroad sidings, and the gas chambers and crematoria — for maximum ease of operation and efficiency.

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. 5.
Context: Precisely at 7 Patton boomed in to breakfast. His vigor was always infectious, his wit barbed, his conversation a mixture of obscenity and good humor. He was at once stimulating and overbearing. George was a magnificent soldier.

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: I had seen Jesus Christ on the margin of the lake. He came like an ordinary man along the path. There is no halo round his head. He is only disclosed by his pallor and his gentleness. Planes of light draw near and mass themselves and fade away around him. He shines in the sky, as he shone on the water. As they have told of him, his beard and hair are the color of wine. He looks upon the immense stain made by Christians on the world, a stain confused and dark, whose edge alone, down on His bare feet, has human shape and crimson color. In the middle of it are anthems and burnt sacrifices, files of hooded cloaks, and of torturers, armed with battle-axes, halberds and bayonets; and among long clouds and thickets of armies, the opposing clash of two crosses which have not quite the same shape. Close to him, too, on a canvas wall, again I see the cross that bleeds. There are populations, too, tearing themselves in twain that they may tear themselves the better; there is the ceremonious alliance, "turning the needy out of the way," of those who wear three crowns and those who wear one; and, whispering in the ear of Kings, there are gray-haired Eminences, and cunning monks, whose hue is of darkness.
I saw the man of light and simplicity bow his head; and I feel his wonderful voice saying:
"I did not deserve the evil they have done unto me."
Robbed reformer, he is a witness of his name's ferocious glory. The greed-impassioned money-changers have long since chased Him from the temple in their turn, and put the priests in his place. He is crucified on every crucifix.

Resignation address to the Peruvian Congress, (22 September 1820), as quoted in '‪Captain of the Andes : The Life of José de San Martín, Liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru (1943) b‬y Margaret Hayne Harrison, p. 159
Context: I have fulfilled the sacred promises which I made Peru; I have witnessed the assembly of its representatives; the enemy's force threatens the independence of no place that wishes to be free, and that possesses the means of being so. A numerous army, under the direction of warlike chiefs, is ready to march in a few days to put an end to the war. Nothing is left for me to do, but to offer you my sincerest thanks, and to promise, that if the liberties of the Peruvians shall ever be attacked, I shall claim the honor of accompanying them to defend their freedom like a citizen.

1860s, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863)

First lines, Ch. 1
The Crimson Petal and the White (2002)
Context: Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories you've read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether.

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 26-27

" Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/englishidyls/willwaterproof.html", st. 6 (1842)
Context: I grow in worth, and wit, and sense,
Unboding critic-pen,
Or that eternal want of pence,
Which vexes public men,
Who hold their hands to all, and cry
For that which all deny them —
Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry,
And all the world go by them.

Sivakozhundu of Tiruvazhundur (1939)
Context: It is natural for a train to run on its tracks. We get into a train because we believe that it will do that. But once in a while the train runs off the rails, and there’s an accident. Those who don’t actually witness such a happening can say, “No train will run off the rails, it is unnatural for it to do so”.

Sermon 87:2 ( Sermon 37:2 http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/160337.htm) on Matthew 20. Preached in the autumn after 424. Latin http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/augustine/serm87.shtml
The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Sermons 51-94), John E. Rotelle, Edmund Hill, eds. & trans., New City Press, 1990 pp. 407- 408. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=bks:1&source=og&q=%22So%20there%20you%20are%3B%20listen%3B%20as%20I%20said%2C%20God%20worships%20us%20in%20the%20sense%20of%20tending%20our%20worth%22&sa=N&tab=wp
Sermons
Context: So there you are; listen; as I said, God "worships" us in the sense of tending our worth. That we worship God, of course, doesn't need proving to you. It's on everybody's lips, after all, that human beings worship God. That God, though, worships human beings, it's enough to frighten hearers out of their wits, because people are not in the habit of saying that God worships human beings — in that special sense —but that human beings worship God.
So I've got to prove to you that God too does "worship" human beings, or you will consider, perhaps, that I have used the word very carelessly, and begin arguing against me in your thoughts, and finding fault with me because you don't in fact grasp what I have been saying. So it's agreed that this is what has to be demonstrated to you: that God also "worships" us; but in the sense I have already mentioned, that he tends our worth as his field, to make improvements in us. The Lord says in the gospel: I am the vine, you are the branches; my Father is the farm worker (Jn 15:5,1). What does a farm worker do? I'm asking you, those of you who are farm workers and farmers. What does a farm worker do? I presume he works his farm, that is, tends its worth, that is, "worships" it, in a sense. So if God the Father is a farmer or farm worker, it means he has a farm, and he works or "worships" his farm, and expects a crop from it.

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

2010, Weekly Address (May 29, 2010)

VI, 29
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Socialism or Barbarism

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, p. 130

2010s, Address to the United States Congress, Mercy Is 'What Pleases God Most

I'm Me
Official Mix tapes, The Leak (2007)

The History of the Quakers (1762)

Umar ibn al-Khattab, Vol. 2, p. 389-390, also quoted in At-Tabqaat ul-Kabir, Vol. 3, p. 339
Last Advise

Often attributed to Plato, it cannot be found in any of his writings ( see this http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=796). The quote is attributed to Plato in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (page 560) by Tryon Edwards.
Misattributed

Final sermon

Source: Sonnet XXIII
Context: As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s right,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharged with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

Source: The Argonauts

Source: The Testament

Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 1

Source: Rant

On Shakespeare (1630)
Source: The Complete Poetry

Source: The Time of My Life

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Source: The Book of Three

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Source: Cinderella's Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground

Source: We Were Liars

Source: The Fountainhead

Source: The Princess Bride

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)
Context: For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

Source: Castle of Wizardry

Source: Diving Into the Wreck

Source: Odd Thomas

Variant: The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

According to TruthOrFiction.com https://www.truthorfiction.com/did-dwight-eisenhower-say-someday-someone-will-claim-it-never-happened-in-1945/, this sentence first appeared in a letter to the editor published on DominicanToday.com, accompanied with the words "he did this because he said in words to this effect". It was probably a paraphrase of the above bold sentence.
Disputed

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Source: Fly by Night

Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Source: In The Face of Danger

Source: The Story of My Life

Source: Kingdom of the Wicked

Essex's Device (1595)

Source: High Fidelity

Source: The Way of Kings

Source: Prodigal Summer (2000).

Source: The Hundred Days