Quotes about wonder
page 34

“I wonder if time-traveling cultures are playing with us. I wonder if they process our history for entertainment values.”

Algis Budrys book Michaelmas

Source: Michaelmas (1977), Chapter 6 (pp. 62-63)

Travel, History, Time

“Humor is absolutely necessary to keep going…So many of the people in my family and my community were wonderful storytellers. They would tell stories about just awful things that happened to them. But their humor made what happened into their own kind of triumph.”

Stephanie Powell Watts

On the importance of humor in “INTERVIEWS: Stephanie Powell Watts” https://bookpage.com/interviews/21148-stephanie-powell-watts-fiction#.Xe_qN_lKjcs in BookPage (April 2017)

People, Family, Communication

“For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.”

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Metaphysics by Aristotle – Book 1, ClassicalWisdom.com
The second sentence is in Metaphysics A 2, 928b 17–20, Aristotle: Metaphysics Beta: Symposium Aristotelicum, Michel Crubellier & Andre´ Laks, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
Metaphysics
Variant: [And] one who experiences a difficulty and who feels wonder thinks that he does not understand..., so that, if it is to escape ignorance that they have practised philosophy, then it is clearly for the sake of knowing, and not for any practical purpose, that they have pursued understanding.

Wisdom, Men, Star, Lovers

“I wonder at the strange fidelity of your officers that they neglect to tell you of the true state of things, but cover a blazing fire with straw ! May the sun of your royalty continue to shine above the horizon of greatness !”

Shivaji (1627–1680) founder of Maratha Empire

Letter to Aurangzeb

Sun

“I was lectured on my political morality, on my preferring British jobs to black lives, on my lack of concern for human rights. One after the other, their accusations became more vitriolic and personal until I could stand it no longer. To their palpable alarm I began to tell my African critics a few home truths. I noted that they were busily trading with South Africa at the same time as they were attacking me for refusing to apply sanctions. I wondered when they intended to show similar concern about abuses in the Soviet Union, with which of course they often had not just trade but close political links. I wondered when I was going to hear them attack terrorism. I reminded them of their own less than impressive record on human rights. And when the representative from Uganda took me to task for racial discrimination, I turned on him and reminded him of the Asians which Uganda had thrown out on racial grounds, many of whom had come to settle in my constituency in North London, where they were model citizens and doing very well.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

On the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Nassau in October 1985, where Thatcher opposed sanctions on South Africa
Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 517

Truth, Home, Time, Personality

“I keep thinking what happens when the power of love is twisted into the love of power. … When he bought our temple we had an eternal light going. Jim asked us to leave it. He wanted to keep it burning as a sign of our friendship and what we stood for. All last night I kept wondering, where did it go out?”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

On Jim Jones, upon hearing of the mass murders and suicides of Jonestown, as quoted in "Cult Chief's Beginnings in Indianapolis Recalled" by James Feron, The New York Times (22 November 1978); in the early years of Jones' ministries, Davis had sold Jones a synagogue in Indianapolis within which Jones housed his first "People's Temple"; also quoted in "Masters and Slaves: The Tragedy of Jonestown", by Fanita English, M.S.W, in Idea, Vol.1, no.2 (1 September 1996) http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=7

Love, Friendship, Making love, Thinking

“The Key! it is of wonderful construction, with its infinity of combination, and its unlimited capacity to fit every lock. … it is the great master-key which unlocks every door of knowledge and without which no discovery which deserves the name — which is law, and not isolated fact — has been or ever can be made. Fascinated by its symmetry the geometer may at times have been too exclusively engrossed with his science, forgetful of its applications; he may have exalted it into his idol and worshipped it; he may have degraded it into his toy... when he should have been hard at work with it, using it for the benefit of mankind and the glory of his Creator.”

Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880) American mathematician

Ben Yamen's Song of Geometry (1853)

Law, Knowledge, Science, Time

“The hardest thing about being a black writer in this town is having to pitch your black story to white execs…Also, most of the time when we go into rooms to pitch, there’s one token black executive that sometimes can be a friend and sometimes can be a foe. I wonder if they think it makes me more comfortable, if that makes me think that they’re a woke network or studio because they’ve got that one black exec. It feels patronizing. I’m not against a black exec. I want there to be more of them.”

Lena Waithe (1984) American actress, producer, and screenwriter

On the still existing obstacles to pitching ideas in “Lena Waithe Is Changing the Game” https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/03/lena-waithe-cover-story in Vanity Fair (April 2018)

Making love, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“This leads to my next myth—the myth that government can spend money at nobody’s expense. What was really involved in that last story was that somehow the local people do not pay out the money coming down from Washington somebody else does. Of course, the truth is that the money makes a round trip between Florida and Washington, and there is a discount taken off for cash as it passes through Washington. Some of you may remember that wonderful description of government by the French economist, Frederic Bastiat, who said that government is that fiction whereby everybody believes that he can live at the expense of everybody else.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“Economic Myths and Public Opinion” https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/AmSpectator_01_1976.pdf, The Alternative: An American Spectator, vol. 9, no. 4, (January 1976) pp. 5-9

Money, People, Truth, Making love

“He has been doing a wonderful job in guiding India even prior to being the prime minister along the path of extraordinary economic growth. That is a marvel, I think, for all of the world.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

Barack Obama, as quoted in "Manmohan Singh is a wise, wonderful man: Obama" http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-04-04/india/28002745_1_obama-climate-change-wonderful-man, The Times of India (4 April 2009)

World, Thinking

“Deep in my psyche, I am no different than any American—I have a greater command of their language than they do. I am a composite of all of the heroines in the books I’ve read—legendary, mythological, fictional ones. I wonder if I am real? I want to be!”

Estela Portillo-Trambley (1936–1998) American writer

On how she would describe herself (as quoted in the book Chicana Ways: Conversations with Ten Chicana Writers https://books.google.com/books?id=yq0PkmCGWoEC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq)

Books, Reading

“She does not believe that Wonder Woman tends to masochism or sadism. Furthermore, she believes that even if it did-you can teach either perversion to children-one can only bring out what is inherent in the child. However she did make the reservation that if the woman slaves wore chains (and enjoyed them) for no purpose whatsoever, there would be no point in chaining them.”

Lauretta Bender (1897–1987) American neuropsychiatrist

As attributed by Dorothy Roubicek in The Secret History of Wonder Woman https://books.google.com/books?id=b3GBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT264&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q=like%20being&f=false by Jill Lepore, (Oct. 23, 2014), p. 240. Attributed

Children, Making love

“Could it be, he wondered, he’d only thought he’d seen what he’d seen because of his own desires, researches, expectations?”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 10 (pp. 117-118)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

“As Socrates showed, love cannot be anything else but the love of the good. But to find the good is very rare. That is why love is rare, in spite of what people think. It happens to one in a thousand, and to that one it is a revelation. No wonder he cannot communicate with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine.”

Mary McCarthy book The Group

Mr Schneider in Ch. 12
The Group (1963)

Love, People, Making love, Communication

“Is it any wonder, therefore, that the young, accustomed to such an environment, grow up to consider life itself a game, in which they are to strive to outwit those about them? Is it any wonder that you and I and men and women everywhere are helplessly selfish, when we were born so, when all that we know of altruism has come thru Sunday-school rumors and straggling precepts, and when we have all our lives been surrounded by selfish people and occupied in selfish pastimes and professions? Nothing could be more natural. Altruism is anomalous on the earth, and it is not astonishing.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Individual Culture, pp. 260–261

Life, Women, Men, People

“Look at the manner in which the aborigines are swept away from continent after continent by the sword and beverage of the Aryans. See how the red children of America have been cheated and debauched and driven from homes where they and their fathers had lived from immemorial generations. When the banner of Castile first furled in Bahama breezes, America was inhabited by a noble, magnanimous, and happy people. They were not like the sodden, suspicious, revengeful remnants that to-day huddle on barricaded reserves, the vindictive survivors of four centuries of injustice. They were kind and generous. They came to the invading Europeans as children, with minds of wonder and with hands filled with presents. They were treated by the invaders like refuse. They were plundered, and their outstretched hands cut off and fed to Spanish hounds. They are gone from the valleys where once their camp-smokes curled to heaven, and their quaint canoes ruffle the moonlight of the rivers no more. They that remain are too weak to rise in warlike challenge to the aggressions of the mighty white. But the story of the meeting of the pale and the red, and of the wrongs of the vanquished red, will remain as one of the mournful tales of this world when the kindred of Lo, like fleecy clouds, have melted into the infinite azure of the past.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, p. 133–134

Happiness, Children, People, World

“No wonder the child loves the camp-fire. The camp-fire was the ancestor of the hearth—the first bright spot in that dark world out of which our forefathers groped their way so long ago.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

The Law of Biogenesis (1914)

Love, World, Making love, Way

“Men are like May-flies. The most of them see things only during the brief breath of a day. The ages of history and biology are unknown and unconsidered. No wonder the universe is misunderstood. The human mind is without longitude. Even a cannonball, photographed with an exposure of one-five-thousandth of a second, seems suspended in mid-air.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Discovering Darwin", Proceedings of the International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection congress, held at Washington, D.C. December 8th to 11th, 1913 (1913), p. 152

Men, Age, History, Universe

“I marvel at the complacency of Ministers in the face of the frightful experiences through which we have all so newly passed. I look with wonder upon our thoughtless crowds disporting themselves in the summer sunshine, and upon this unfocused, unheeding House of Commons, which seems to have no higher function than to cheer a Minister. But what is happening across the narrow seas? A terrible process is astir. Germany is arming.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

That mighty race who fought and almost vanquished the whole world is on the march again. The whole nation is inspired with the idea of retrieving and avenging their defeat in the Great War. They have arisen from the pit of disaster in monstrous guise. ... And we are still pestering France to disarm, and we are still disarmed ourselves!
'How I Would Procure Peace', Daily Mail (9 July 1934), quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 12: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (Michigan: Hillsdale Press, 2012), p. 825, n. 3
The 1930s

Summer, Housing, Sea

“Other people have marveled at the growth and strength of America. They have wondered how a few weak and discordant colonies were able to win their independence from one of the greatest powers of the world. They have been amazed at our genius for self-government. They have been unable to comprehend how the shock of a great Civil War did not destroy our Union. They do not understand the economic progress of our people. It is true that we have had the advantage of great natural resources, but those have not been exclusively ours. Others have been equally fortunate in that direction. The progress of America has been due to the spirit of the people. It is in no small degree due to that spirit that we have been able to produce such great leaders.”

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

If coming generations are to maintain a like spirit, it will be because they continue to support the principles which these men represented. It is for that purpose that we erect memorials. We can not hold our admiration for the historic figures which we shall see here without growing stronger in our determination to perpetuate the institutions which their lives revealed and established.
1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

War, People, World, Understanding

“The rest of the world is wondering what’s going on… Eight years of this and I think we’ll have a phenomenal dislocation occur around the world. I think you’ll see the end of NATO and a whole range of other things…”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Joe Biden in Florida: Another four years of Trump will ‘end NATO’, Miami Herald, https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2019/05/22/joe-biden-in-florida-another-four-years-of-trump-will-end-nato/ (22 May 2019) 2019

World, Thinking

“Women worship at the feet of the devil and wonder why the world is evil.”

Stefan Molyneux (1966) libertarian philosopher, writer, speaker, and online broadcaster

"The Matriarchal Lineage of Corruption" https://vimeo.com/119085990, The Freedomain Radio Call In Show with Stefan Molyneux (January 8, 2014)

Women, World, Evil

“One of my greatest fears was the Witches, for while I had no magical powers at all I soon found out that the Witches were really able to do wonderful things. There were four of them in this country, and they ruled the people who live in the North and South and East and West. Fortunately, the Witches of the North and South were good, and I knew they would do me no harm; but the Witches of the East and West were terribly wicked, and had they not thought I was more powerful than they themselves, they would surely have destroyed me.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

People, Fear, Country

“The method of the science not being practiced much nowadays, except what logic prescribes to all sciences generally, that fitted for the peculiar nature of metaphysics being simply ignored, it is no wonder that those who everlastingly turn the Sisyphean stone of this inquiry do not seem so far to have made much progress. Though here I neither can nor will expatiate upon so important and extensive a subject, I shall briefly shadow forth what constitutes no despicable part of this method, namely, the infection between sensuous and intellectual cognition, not only as creeping in on those incautious in the application of principles, but even producing spurious principles under the appearance of axioms.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section V On The Method Respecting The Sensuous And The Intellectual In Metaphysics

Nature, Appearance, Science, Parting

“Brazilian prisons are wonderful places … they’re places for people to pay for their sins, not live the life of Reilly in a spa. Those who rape, kidnap and kill are going there to suffer, not attend a holiday camp.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In February 2014. Who is Jair Bolsonaro? Brazil's far-right president in his own words https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-tropical-trump-who-hankers-for-days-of-dictatorship. The Guardian (29 October 2018).

Life, People, Suffering, Holiday

“With the exception of Yugoslavia, in numerous European countries—in the name of socialism—usurping bureaucracies that are cut off from the people (bureaucracies from which it is now proven that nothing can be expected) have achieved the pitiable wonder of transforming into a nightmare what humanity has for so long cherished as a dream: socialism.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Letter to Maurice Thorez resigning from the French Communist Party, October 24, 1956

People, Dreams, Country

“And all over the country the antagonists of human liberty, of human dignity—the racketeers, the crooked political figures, the shysters, the dealers in phony religions, the sweat-shoppers, the petty authoritarians, all of the key figures among the traffickers in human misery and human oppression, themselves somewhat adept in the arts of the mind and acutely aware of the danger of free knowledge—all of this unholy breed stirred uneasily and wondered what was taking place.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Lost Legacy

Lost Legacy (p. 339)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Religion, Art, Knowledge, Country

“Student: Drought, flooding and ocean recidification unanticipated for 65 million years all result from climate change according to over 700 of your fellow scientists so I was wondering whether you thought climate change could be an issue that would unite us all; left and right, moving us beyond debates, C-16 into discussions at the UN??? meets here next month where perhaps humanity might finally discover its global map of meaning.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Peterson: No.
Audience laughs and applauds
Talk At The Cambridge Union, 2nd November 2018

Change

“That He has achieved the fullness of that divinity is His Glory, and well may we stand in reverence at this achievement. That this same achievement is rare indeed is also indisputably true. But the wonder of the Christ for men is that He was one of them. Naught there is, in the trials and sufferings of men, but He did know it. Each step of the path that men still tread has He painfully trodden. Nothing is there, in the whole panorama of human experience, that He has not shared. Thus truly is He the Son of Man.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

https://www.share-international.org/archives/M_mission/mm_sonoman.htm Full text online
Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Men, Suffering, Christ

“I’ve never heard him say anything hateful, or say anything mean about anybody … I can speak to my own personal experience and, frankly, my gratitude to him, for the gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given to me, and to so many people.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Speaking of Chris Butler, creator of the Science of Identity Foundation https://www.chrisbutlerspeaks.com/about-chris-butler, as quoted in "What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe?" by Kelefa Sanneh, in The New Yorker (6 November 2017) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/what-does-tulsi-gabbard-believe 2017

Hate, People, Personality, Gratitude

“There are subjects forbidden by good manners, it seems. As in many societies, I suppose, where the very fundamentals of their existence are the subject of the deepest taboos. What is this terror of reality, I wonder, which plagues the human spirit?”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 4 “On Joining the Gypsies” (pp. 188-189)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Reality

“It is wonderful that certain people and circles still believe I have the aspiration to become Chancellor and receive nightmares from this thought. How often I have declared that I would have to be a fool if I wanted to strive for this really unenviable position! I have already achieved some time ago everything a soldier can achieve, I hold a post that involves little work and no agitation or anger, and I know the position of a Chancellor under Kaiser Wilhelm II only too well that I would have to be mad to desire it.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary c. December 1901

People, Fools, Time, Madness

“I know a lot of people wonder why an ex-footballer should seek the presidency of the country but no one asks a lawyer or a businessman why they do the same.”

George Weah (1966) Liberian association football player and politician

George Weah (2017) cited in: " George Weah: ‘Arsène Wenger showed me love when racism was at its peak’ https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/dec/25/george-weah-arsene-wenger-chelsea-liberia-president" in The Guardian, 25 December 2017.

People, Football, Country

“As to us here our thoughts of every thing at home are suspended, by our astonishment at the wonderful Spectacle which is exhibited in a Neighbouring and rival Country—what Spectators, and what actors! England gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for Liberty and not knowing whether to blame or to applaud! The thing indeed, though I thought I saw something like it in progress for several years, has still something in it paradoxical and Mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to admire; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner. It is true, that this may be no more than a sudden explosion… But if it should be character rather than accident, then that people are not fit for Liberty, and must have a Strong hand like that of their former masters to coerce them. Men must have a certain fund of natural moderation to qualifye them for Freedom, else it becomes noxious to themselves and a perfect Nuisance to every body else.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Lord Charlemont (9 August 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 10
1780s

Men, People, Home, Nature

“You have performed wonders in the past. You are still capable of repeating the history. You are not lacking in the great qualities and virtues in comparison with the other nations. Only you have to be fully conscious of that fact and to act with courage, faith and unity.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Message on Pakistan Day, issued from Delhi (23 March 1943)

Faith, History, Courage, Past

“Escape, God how we all need escape from this tiny here. The need for it has motivated just about everything man has ever done in any direction other than that of the satisfaction of his physical appetites; it has led him along weird and wonderful pathways; it has led him into art and religion, ascetism and astrology, dancing and drinking, poetry and insanity. All of these have been escapes because he has known only recently the true direction of escape—outward, into infinity and eternity, away from this little flat if rounded surface we’re born on and die on. This mote in the solar system, this atom in the galaxy.”

Fredric Brown book The Lights in the Sky Are Stars

Source: The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953), Chapter 5 “2001” (pp. 243-244; "ascetism" should be "asceticism")

God, Religion, Art, Motivation

“How can even the lowest mind, if he reflects at all the marvels of this earth and sky, the brilliant fashioning of plants and animals, remain blind to the fact that this wonderful world with its settled order must have a maker to design, determine and direct it?”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

Tibawi, A.L. (ed. and tr.). (1965) Al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle) “Al-Ghazali's Tract on Dogmatic Theology”. In: The Islamic Quarterly, 9:3–4 (1965), 3-4.

World, Fashion, Animals

“Myself, when young, loved nature rather than sport, and took to Botany as a hobby. Gradually I began to realise that the Family of Grasses was the most important of all, and did my best to become acquainted with that perhaps most difficult of all plant families. … it is one of the largest of all families in botany, and the flowers are mostly very small and insignificant, and often call for the use of lenses to distinguish them properly. No wonder that other easier, more gaudy and attractive families are preferred by botanical beginners. But once you take a little trouble … their attraction and their glory grow on you, until at last you surrender completely to their charm.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Foreword (dated 15 May 1950) to The Grasses & Pastures of South Africa, D. Meredith (ed.), 1954

Love, Making love, Family, Flowers

“I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things. First, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mister Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mister Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The man who could say, 'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether', gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the south was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go. About Abraham Lincoln https://web.archive.org/web/20150302203311/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=4071#_ftnref57. 1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Hate, People, Color, Feeling

“He…made observations with regard to the Queen, which, in my opinion, no meeting of people in this country, and certainly no meeting of Reformers, ought to have listened to with approbation. (Cheers.) Let it be remembered that there has been no occasion on which any Ministry has proposed an improved representation of the people when the Queen has not given her cordial, unhesitating, and, I believe, hearty assent. (Cheers.) … But Mr. Ayrton referred further to a supposed absorption of the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband to the exclusion of sympathy for and with the people. (Hear, hear.) I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns. (Hear, hear.) But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. (Loud cheers.) I think there has been by many persons a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. (Cheers.) And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she the Queen of a great realm or be she the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Loud and prolonged cheers.
Speech in St James's Hall, Piccadilly, London (4 December 1866), quoted in The Times (5 December 1866), p. 7
1860s

Life, Men, Pain, People

“Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.”

Bonaventure (1221–1274) franciscan, bishop, cardinal, Doctor of the Church, catholic saint

The Journey of the Mind to God

Love, Wisdom, Making love, Understanding

“Freedom was wonderful beyond relief. But with it came that bitch, Duty.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 14 (p. 270)

Freedom, Bitch

“Frankie Boyle: So, those are our teams. No wonder Simon Amstell left.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Never Mind The Buzzcocks Series 23 Episode 11

“The loudest sound on a battle field was click! when you were expecting bang! It was a never-ending wonder: What was going to go wrong next?”

Steve Perry (1947) American writer

Source: The Tejano Conflict (2014), Chapter 3

“Sometimes I wonder if MacKinnon has simply been driven mad by all the sick things people do to one another. I, too, recoil in pain and incomprehension whenever I hear about the latest psychopath who has shot his mother, machine-gunned his coworkers, raped his daughter, or slashed a prostitute. I notice that such men are more likely to have read the bible than pornography, but I do not hold either script responsible for their actions.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon" http://susiebright.blogs.com/Old_Static_Site_Files/Prime_Of_Kitty_MacKinnon.pdf, by Susie Bright, East Bay Express, October 1993.

Men, Pain, People, Reading

“It is quite a revolution, dear Christian. Your dresses have such a new look. They are quite wonderful you know.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Carmel Snow in Harper’s Bazar office, in p. 135
This news and the show was hailed by the American and other foreign press as French press was on strike.
Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New

“Christian, however, was fortunate having a paternal grandmother who realized very early that this child was very different from his brothers and sisters, if only physically. Raymond was a fighter, Jacqueline a tomboy, and Bernard, who was gentle as a lamb, had an introverted side that caused concern. Christian on the other hand was lively and affectionate, interested in everything – and with such an imagination. He epitomized the wonderment of childhood.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

In p. 13
Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New

Imagination, Sister, Childhood

“This rare and inspiring exhibition could hardly help but elicit wonder.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Art media on Kapoor’s first major exhibition in Australia.
Exhibition: Anish Kapoor

Help

“He was a genius who could not only transcend all theoretical boundaries of a technique, but verily transport any category of listener to a sublime realm. No wonder, he had among his fans as many votaries of Hindustani style as its Carnatic counterpart.”

Bhimsen Joshi (1922–2011) Indian vocalist

Critique

“What made her talent so great was her capacity to live what she sang. Her music was deepened by her connection to the struggles and the triumphs of the African American experience growing up in her father’s church, the community of Detroit, and her awareness of the turmoil of the South. She had a lifelong, unwavering commitment to civil rights and was one of the strongest supporters of the movement. She was our sister and our friend. Whenever I would see her, from time to time, she would always inquire about the well-being of people she met and worked with during the sixties.When she sang, she embodied what we were fighting for, and her music strengthened us. It revived us. When we would be released from jail after a non-violent protest, we might go to a late night club and let the music of Aretha Franklin fill our hearts. She was like a muse whose songs whispered the strength to continue on. Her music gave us a greater sense of determination to never give up or give in, and to keep the faith. She was a wonderful, talented human being. We mourn for Aretha Franklin. We have lost the Queen of Soul.”

Aretha Franklin (1942–2018) American musician, singer, songwriter, and pianist

John Lewis, "Congressman John Lewis on Aretha Franklin: ‘One of God’s precious gifts’" https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/congressman-john-lewis-aretha-franklin-one-god-precious-gifts/PRXHP5dgRpjhhuIUdjGEsO/, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (August 16, 2018)

People, Faith, Music, Soul

“I pledged myself to show you wonders.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

I drew her farther from the building. “I’m not ready to see wonders. Yours, or any other woman’s.”
Source: Fiction, The Book of the New Sun (1980–1983), The Urth of the New Sun (1987), Chapter 19, "Silence" (p. 132)

“I wonder what Gale made of the incident for a moment and then I push the whole thing out of my mind becouse for some reason Gale and Peeta do not coexist well together in my thoughts.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss, p. 186/187
The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

“I will dwell a little longer on his character; for it was of a very extraordinary composition. He began to make a considerable figure very early. … He had a wonderful faculty in speaking to a popular assembly, and could mix both the facetious and the serious way of arguing very agreeably. He had a particular talent to make others trust to his judgment, and depend on it: and he brought over so many to a submission to his opinion, that I never knew any man equal to him in the art of governing parties, and of making himself the head of them. He was, as to religion, a deist at best.”

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1621–1683) English politician and Earl

Gilbert Burnet, in Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time (1823), Vol. I, p. 164
About Anthony Ashley-Cooper

Making love, Religion, Art, Way

“I just love Paul Scholes. He’s been the best footballer in our division for the last ten years. He’s a a wonderful player. If they get hold of him and stop him from playing I think Chelsea will beat them.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.talksport.co.uk/sports-news/football/premier-league/6395/0/exclusive-%E2%80%93-wilkins-%E2%80%98chelsea-will-beat-united-if-they-stop-scholes%E2%80%99
Ray Wilkins

Love, Making love, Thinking, Football

“The danger, I suppose, of using pseudonyms is that it interferes with that desirable process—the unification of the personality. Goethe said that even the writing of plays, dividing the imagination up among different fictional personalities, damaged what he valued — the mind’s wholeness. I wonder what he meant exactly, since he also described his mode of thinking as imagined conversations with various people. Maybe the pseudonyms, like other personalities conjured up in a dramatic work, can be a preliminary stage of identifying and exploring new parts of yourself. Then the next stage would be to incorporate them in the unifying process. Accept responsibility for them. Maybe that’s what Yeats meant by seeking his opposite. The great Sufi master Ibn el-Arabi described the essential method of spiritual advancement as an inner conversation with the personalities that seem to exist beyond what you regard as your own limits... getting those personalities to tell you what you did not know, or what you could not easily conceive of within your habitual limits. This is commonplace in some therapies, of course.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview

People, Imagination, Thinking, Parting

“There’s something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar – even in this fake-ass Irish pub.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Medium Raw (2010)

Drink

“Del Piero is a champion with extraordinary technical ability and wonderful characteristics. When he is selected he never disappoints. He is an example to us all.”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

"He has great skills and intuitions that few other players have". "He is a captain in the real sense of the word". Marcello Lippi, SoccerItalia.net http://www.socceritalia.net/applications/NewsManager/inc_newsmanager.asp?ItemID=3400&pcid=12&cid=41&archive=yes, JuventusFootball http://web.archive.org/20020312015446/www.geocities.com/juventusfootball/news/archived01/102401.htm

Disappointment

“An hour of the real thing. Ravi Shankar, a wonderful virtuoso, played his own Indian music to us at the radio station. Brilliant, fascinating, stimulating, wonderfully played. Unbelievable skill and invention.”

Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) Indian musician and sitar player

By the world's most performed opera composer Benjamin Britten quoted in Letter found from Britain's greatest opera composer's drawer shows his love for Ravi Shankar, 2 October 2013, Official website of Ravishnkar Organization http://www.ravishankar.org/,

Music

“The art world is really exactly the same as the sex industry: you have to be completely on guard, you will get shafted, fucked over left, right and centre. And you will also meet charming, wonderful people like a rainbow at the end of the day.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Source: David Smith, "Art? It's like the sex trade", http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1759321,00.html The Observer, (2006-04-23) : On the art world.

People, World, Art, Sex

“Think about this, the people gave birth to me cannot stop hating each other enough. What does that tell you about me? Half of my genes must be fighting with other half, no wonder I am so fucking messed up.”

Chetan Bhagat book One Night @ the Call Center

Source: One Night @ the Call Center (2005), P. 211

Hate, People, Birth, Thinking

“He had a roly poly physique but a wonderful left foot and he was a brilliant finisher. I would put Puskas in any list of all time greats.”

Ferenc Puskás (1927–2006) Hungarian-Spanish association football player

Preston and England legend Sir Tom Finney

Time

“I noticed my brother sent copies of his e-mail to his nephews and nieces, as well as to our siblings. The wonder is not that he knows so much about Church history, but that such matters continue to preoccupy him. Why not let it go?”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

History, Siblings

“And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Love, Men, God, People

“Oh my God! I was always wondering what it would be like to run over a dried up, stinky, dick licker.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

Toll Booth Willie

God

“For me, a director is more important than a big banner. A great director can do wonders. Of course, banners do matter because, ultimately, after all the hard work you put it, the film must release. This will happen only if you work with a good banner or a producer who markets your film well, gives the director whatever he wants, and releases the film.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

[rediff.com, Fame, http://www.rediff.com/movies/2003/jun/12rani.htm, 23 August, 2006]
The Actress' Take On Films

“Yes. Women characters are once again assuming significance in films. Karan Johar, Sanjay Bhansali and Yash uncle conceive wonderful women characters. In the ’50s and ’60s, Bimal Roy and Guru Duttji wrote beautiful roles for heroines. You couldn’t take your eyes off a close-up of Waheedaji, Nargisji, Nutanji or Meenaji. Times are changing again. The Bhansali-shot close-ups of Ash and Madhuri in Devdas were awesome.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

citation needed
The Actress' Take On Films

Women, Beauty, Change, Time

“The feats of our brave troops are wonderful, God gave them success.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

May He continue to help them to peace with honour, & the victory over Juda & Antichrist in British garb.
Letter to Margarethe Landgraffin von Hessen (20 April 1941), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1262
1940s

God, Success

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

Eudora Welty book One Writer's Beginnings

One Writer's Beginnings(1984)

Love, People, Books, Making love

“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

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

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

God, Making love, Disease, Beauty

“Prem Rawat speaks of a peace that is more than the absence of war. A peace that institutions cannot bring. A peace that needs to be established by each individual. To establish peace on the outside, he says, peace needs to be established first on the inside. He brings a remarkable message of hope, and I look forward to hearing him tonight. Please join me in welcoming to the stage a truly wonderful, international, inspirational man, Prem Rawat.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

About, 2000s

War, Peace, Hope

“I wonder how it will read five hundred years from now?”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

To make a man confess a loving God you burn him!
The Heretic (1968)

Reading

“Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader’s mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrave make their call at five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance. Here, indeed, in this unfinished and in the main inferior story, are all the elements of Jane Austen’s greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature. Think away the surface animation, the likeness to life, and there remains, to provide a deeper pleasure, an exquisite discrimination of human values.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925)

Life, Men, Pleasure, Making love

“Miss Austen was surely a great novelist. What she did, she did perfectly. Her work, as far as it goes, is faultless. She wrote of the times in which she lived, of the class of people with which she associated, and in the language which was usual to her as an educated lady. Of romance, -- what we generally mean when we speak of romance -- she had no tinge. Heroes and heroines with wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of great criminals and hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with an unconscious accuracy how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her people are all good; -- and, certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of folly I know no novelist who has beaten her. The letters of Mr. Collins, a clergyman in Pride and Prejudice, would move laughter in a low-church archbishop.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Anthony Trollope, Lecture (1870)

Women, Men, People, Education

“I look at those words—gang ties—and I think about all the players I’ve met in the NFL and all of us who come from inner-city neighborhoods like mine in Los Angeles, and I wonder how many of us could honestly say we’re not friends with guys doing the wrong things. I can’t.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Angels, Guy, Thinking

“There was nothing like a museum for calming the mind, for putting the problems of everyday life in their true perspective. Here, surrounded by the infinite variety and wonder of Nature, he was reminded of truths he had forgotten. He was only one of a million million creatures that shared this planet Earth. The entire human race, with its hopes and fears, its triumphs and its follies, might be no more than an incident in the history of the world.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Death and the Senator

Death and the Senator, p. 744
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Life, Truth, World, Fear

“Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageble, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 5 : On Death

Life, Wisdom

“Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them. It's not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don't work. It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I'm still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long. … The world's clearly a better place. Individuals can now do things that only large groups of people with lots of money could do before. What that means is, we have much more opportunity for people to get to the marketplace — not just the marketplace of commerce but the marketplace of ideas. The marketplace of publications, the marketplace of public policy. You name it. We've given individuals and small groups equally powerful tools to what the largest, most heavily funded organizations in the world have. And that trend is going to continue. You can buy for under $10,000 today a computer that is just as powerful, basically, as one anyone in the world can get their hands on.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s, Rolling Stone interview (1994)

Money, People, World, Faith

“The point is that when I see a sunset or a waterfall or something, for a split second it's so great, because for a little bit I'm out of my brain, and it's got nothing to do with me. I'm not trying to figure it out, you know what I mean? And I wonder if I can somehow find a way to maintain that mind stillness.”

Chris Evans (actor) (1981) American actor

Way

“Do yours the right way. If you’re young and wondering whether you should wait, whether you should just give in, become a live-in harlot/mimbo and do it the world’s way. If you’re wondering whether all of the mocking, the ridicule, the incredible difficulty of saving yourself for your spouse is worth it, let me tell you without a doubt that it is. Your wedding can be the most memorable day and night of your life… or just another party.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/waiting-till-the-wedding-night-getting-married-the-right-way

Life, World, Way, Wedding

“I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground, and scour Iraq from one corner to the other, and find no weapons of mass destruction?”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Quoted by Lawrence Wilkerson in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2006/01/19/breaking-ranks-span-classbankheadlarry-wilkerson-attacked-the-iraq-war-in-the-process-he-lost-the-friendship-of-colin-powellspan/d1f359c6-93a0-41c1-beee-2284d6284d47/ Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006) 2000s

“Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!””

T.S. Eliot book Poems

The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness.

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

“I had always wondered what it felt like to die.”

Steven Pressfield Gates of Fire

Gates of Fire (1998)

“I wonder, one day, when I am long gone of course, if Astronists of the far future will be there when the greatest mysteries of The Cosmos are revealed. Oh, I do hope so”

Cometan

Book: Cometan, the Omnidoxy

Hope, Future

“If I was a junkman selling you cars,
Washing your windows and shining your stars,
Thinking your mind was my own in a dream
What would you wonder and how would it seem?
Living in castles a bit at a time
The King started laughing and talking in rhyme.
Singing words, words between the lines of age.
Words, words between the lines of age.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Words (between the lines of age)
Song lyrics, Harvest (1972)

Age, Dreams, Cars, Star

“What if your enemy were your enemy because of poor communication and misunderstanding? What if your enemy were your enemy because of the instigative nature of the ego? What if your enemy were a necessary obstacle put in your life by fate to overcome in order to progress to the higher version of self? I wonder about that because what if your enemy is in fact your hero? Make sure the snake in your life isn't just your pride and ego.”

Scarlet Jei Saoirse (1984) American singer and actress

Life, Fate, Making love, Communication

“Nor at present, nor in the past, we have ever denied,
That your sense of justice is trumpeted far and wide.
Whatever has been happening, we also accept
Fell within the limits of law, with justice as your guide.
Even when you ordered firing on the helpless multitude,
You didn't even by a hair-breadth the law of land defied.
But this truth too cannot be lightly brushed aside,
Thay your act unleashed a deluge of death in the twinkling of an eye,
The handsome youth when they fell before your deadly fire],
Wondered if it was the doom, or the stars shooting from the [[sky.
The arch and pulpit of the mosque were left riddled with bullets,
But the mosque needs perhaps such patterns on its front and sides.
Fast-fettered did they watch, the convicts and the passers-by,
And the police took the stand: How can we, the servants, the sovereign's fiat defy?
But let's state the fact, you may or may not like,
We are the oppressed folk, you are not the oppressor, right!”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 105
Poetry, Oppression

Death, Truth, Youth, Justice

“No other action provides me with as much fulfilment of faith than when I look up at the stars and wonder of all there is beyond our small world”

Cometan

Book: Cometan, the Omnidoxy

World, Faith, Star

“The Crisis, the civilizational crisis of the West at this point is devastating... it does bring up childhood memories of listening to Hitler raving on the radio to raucous crowds... it makes you wonder if this species is even viable.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Noam Chomsky: Coronavirus - What is at stake? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-N3In2rLI4 | Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) Mar 28, 2020 Quotes 2010s, 2020, Coronavirus - What is at stake?

Making love, Memory, Childhood

“Just so, our natural power is sapped by the parasites of the centuries: fear, superstition, a view of reality that reduces life's wonders to creaking machinery. If we starve these parasitic beliefs they will die.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

Life, Fear, Nature, Reality

“Even the toughest politicians sometimes wonder whether political life is worth the personal cost.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Source: Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015), Battlelines book, (2013), p. 4.

Life, Personality

“There had been a human soul in that skull only a few hours earlier, and now no authority in the universe could bring her back. We were like monkeys sitting around a fire that had just extinguished, wondering why the warmth and light had gone away.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 19 (pp. 307-308)

Soul, Light, Universe

“Some days will be sublime. Others will be merely wonderful. But critically, there will be one particular texture ("what it feels like") of consciousness that will be missing from our lives; and that will be the texture of nastiness.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

" Feeling Groovy, Forever https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/sirius20120314", Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 14 Mar. 2012

Feeling

“A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Health, Making love, Home, Failure

“I see here some foolish ones fidgeting and wondering why the guards do not remove me from the floor. Save your energy, for the guards cannot touch me. Nor can you so much as rise from your seats to lay hands on me. Try it, if you do not believe me.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958)

“Get up and bring fur clothes as Autumn is here
A cold wind is blowing from the Khawrazm yonder
Look at that vine leaf hanging on the vine bough
It looks like the shirt of dyers
The farmer is biting his finger with wonder
As in the lawn or garden is left no more rose or lavender”

Manuchehri (1000–1040) Persian poet

Autumn, Clothes

“Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody—anybody!—be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black stem-rot.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 266)

People, Stupidity, Thinking

“Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

A Warning To My Readers
Poems

World, Nature, Thinking, Time

“I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have broken the glass of the fire-alarm and have nothing to do but to wait.
I do not think we will have to wait for long”

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

"The Sentinel" (1948), originally titled "Sentinel of Eternity" this is the short story which later provided the fundamental ideas for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) written by Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. Full text in 10 Story Fantasy, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1951), p. 41 https://archive.org/details/10_Story_Fantasy_v01n01_1951-Spring_Tawrast-EXciter/page/n39. Two versions of the next to the last sentence have been widely published since at least 1951, the other being: "If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait." 1940s

Way, Star, Thinking, Waiting

“When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love and praise.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 453 (9 August 1712)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Love, God, Making love, Soul

“India is pre-eminently distinguished for the many traits of original grandeur of thought and of the wonderful remains of immediate knowledge.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

Knowledge

Quotes about wonder page 34

Quotes about wonder
page 34