Quotes about wording (9378 quotes, page 53)

“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"Le Secret Professionnel" (originally published 1922); later published in Collected Works Vol. 9 (1950)
A Call to Order (1926)

Sense , Light

“Gentlemen on this floor and in the Senate, had repeatedly, during this discussion, asserted that slavery was a moral, political, and personal blessing; that the slave was free from care, contented, happy, fat, and sleek. Comparisons have been instituted between slaves and laboring freemen, much to the advantage of the condition of slavery. Instances are cited where the slave, having tried freedom, had voluntarily returned to resume his yoke. Well, if this be so, let us give all a chance to enjoy this blessing. Let the slaves, who choose, go free; and the free, who choose, become slaves. If these gentlemen believe there is a word of truth in what they preach, the slaveholder need be under no apprehension that he will ever lack bondsmen. Their slaves would remain, and many freemen would seek admission into this happy condition. Let them be active in propagating their principles. We will not complain if they establish Societies in the South for that purpose -- abolition societies to abolish freedom. Nor will we rob the mails to search for incendiary publications in favor of slavery, even if they contain seductive pictures, and cuts of those implements of happiness -- handcuffs, iron yokes and cat-o'-nine tails.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens

Truth , Search , Cats , Freedom

“When someone turns to me and addresses me as 'our Queen', that word means a lot to me because it makes me feel that they know my life is theirs. My joy is their joy. My worries are their worries. If the word 'queen' means something to me, 'our queen' means everything to me.”

Queen Rania of Jordan (1970) Queen consort of Jordan

Interview in Arabic with Al-Arabiya, 27/10/2013

Life , Feeling , Joy

“What he dreads is that, during a lull in the conversation, someone will come up with what he calls The Question—“What led you, Mrs. Costello, to become a vegetarian?”—and that she will then get on her high horse and produce what he and Norma call The Plutarch Response. … The response in question comes from Plutarch's moral essays. His mother has it by heart; he can reproduce it only imperfectly. “You ask me why I refuse to eat flesh. I, for my part, am astonished that you can put in your mouth the corpse of a dead animal, am astonished that you do not find it nasty to chew hacked flesh and swallow the juices of death-wounds.” Plutarch is a real conversation-stopper: it is the word juices that does it. Producing Plutarch is like throwing down a gauntlet; after that, there is no knowing what will happen.”

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 38

Death , Question , Heart , Animals

“And you can tell everybody, this is your song.
It may be quite simple but now that it's done,
I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind
That I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Your Song
Song lyrics, Elton John (1970)

Life , World , Hope

“One of the first things I had been taught as a child was never to believe a single word that was written in newspapers.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Good people all, with one acord,
Lament for Madame Blaize,
Who never wanted a good word —
From those who spoke her praise.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize, st. 1.
The Bee (1759)

People

“If the word of how they're being treated keeps getting out, we're going to have al-Qaeda people surrendering all over the world trying to get in place.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Stated about Guantanamo Bay (June 16, 2005), quoted in — [Stanford, David, Doonesbury.com's The War in Quotes, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008, 68, 16900868M, 0740772317, 9780740772313, 2008024621]

People , World

“Those words revealed a selfless dignity which is very rare in politics but common amongst Liberal Democrats. If our losses today are part payment for every family that is more secure because of a job we helped to create, every person with depression who is treated with a compassion they deserve, every child who does a little better in school, every apprentice with a long and rewarding career to look forward to, every gay couple who know that their love is worth no less than anyone else’s and every pensioner with a little more freedom and dignity in retirement then I hope at least our losses can be endured with a little selfless dignity too.”

Nick Clegg (1967) British politician

Resignation speech after losing the 2015 general election UK http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/nick-clegg-resigns-the-liberal-democrat-leaders-resignation-speech-text-in-full-10235830.html The Independent (8 May 2015)

Love , School , Family , Hope

“Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst praise God by singing hymns to Him in church once a week, and disobeying Him all the week long. He asks of thee works as well as words; and more, He asks of thee works first and words after.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 456.

God , Singing

“Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "A good word is sadaqa."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 694
Sunni Hadith

Peace

“I'm not a political singer. I don't know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

Interview with Robin Denselow (May 2008)
Source: Denselow, Robin, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2280144,00.html, Robin Denselow talks to African superstar and activist Miriam Makeba, The Guardian, 15, London, 16 May 2008, 18 November 201

Life , People , World , Thinking

“On all questions of principle, the party is not only Liberal, but clear grit in the real sense of the word…. pure sand without a particle of dirt in it!”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

on campaign trail for Ontario provincial election in Strathroy 1871 Thomson

Question , Sense

“At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance were these — "God bless Captain Vere!"”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 25

God

“While darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the people, long after the authority to administer in holy things had been taken away, the Lord opened the heavens and sent forth his word for the salvation of Israel. In fulfillment of the sacred scripture, the everlasting gospel was proclaimed by the mighty angel (Moroni), who, clothed with the authority of his mission, gave glory to God in the highest. This gospel is the ‘stone taken from the mountain without hands.’ John the Baptist, holding the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood; Peter, James and John, holding the keys of the Melchizedek Priesthood, have also ministered for those who shall be heirs of salvation, and with these ministrations ordained men to the same priesthoods. These priesthoods, with their authority, are now, and must continue to be, in the body of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Blessed is the elder who has received the same, and thrice blessed and holy is he who shall endure to the end. Accept assurances, dear brother, of the unfeigned prayer of him who, in connection with Joseph the Seer, was blessed with the above ministrations and who earnestly and devoutly hopes to meet you in the celestial glory.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Statement from Cowdery to Elder Samuel W. Richards, Oliver Cowdery’s Last Letter, Deseret News, (March 22, 1884).

Men , God , People , Hope

“The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end.”

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

Letter to John Adams (11 January 1817)
1810s

Reading

“Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected (1991)

“"Hope" is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all — And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm — ”

Emily Dickinson Hope is a subtle Glutton

254: "Hope" is the thing with feathers —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)

Hope , Soul , Bird , Singing

“We in England also suffer very much…from very clever physicians who are always prepared to prescribe for the body politic with a great deal of intellectual agility, which is equalled only by their ignorance of human nature. These people in Europe are called the "intelligentsia"—a very ugly word for a very ugly thing.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 78.
1927

People , Nature , Suffering

“Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things; money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humoured, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich — that one word contradicts everything you can say against him.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Act III, sc. vii
The Miser (1733)

Money , Lovers

“Oh, Bertie, if I ever called you a brainless poop who ought to be given a scholarship at some lunatic asylum, I take back the words.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)

“I wrote the first 5,000 words of William the Antichrist. It had a demon named Crawleigh. He drove a Citroen 2CV, and was ineffectual. Proper demons like Hastur and Ligur loathed him. It had a baby swap. I sent it to a few friends for feedback. Then my graphic novel Sandman happened, and it was almost a year later that the phone rang.
"It's Terry," said Terry. "'Ere. That thing you sent me. Are you doing anything with it?"
"Not really."
"Well, I think I know what happens next. Do you want to sell it to me? Or write it together?"
"Write it together," I said, because I was not stupid, and because that was the nearest I was ever going to get to Michaelangelo phoning to ask if I wanted to paint a ceiling with him.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Good Omens: How Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote a book (2014)

Stupidity , Thinking , Baby , Painting

“Fautrier's exhibition [in Paris 1945] made an extremely strong impression on me. Art had never before appeared so fully realised in its pure state. The word 'art' had never before been so loaded with meaning for me.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Source: posthumous, Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews, 2006, pp. 23,28: quote in Dubuffet's letter to Jean Paulhan (letter 108)

Art , Strong , Appearance

“Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books

Wisdom , Men , Age , Learning

“Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes
Now that I can hear all your poison prose
Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze
I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy
There are no words for me inside your dictionary”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Your Dictionary".
Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999)

Clothes

“Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Needs of the Soul (1949), Ch. 3, Liberty

Sense

“The Gospels were not thought of as works of literature. People were not concerned with the literary reputation of Matthew or Mark, but with the substance of their records of our Lord's life. They did not have to respect their actual words, as they would if they were transcribing the works of Thucydides or Plato.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 135

Life , People , Literature

“Folks, tomorrow America will get to hear those four words we've been waiting for: "Former president George Bush."”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Monologue, 19 January, 2009
The Tonight Show

Waiting

“We have not a direct intuition of simultaneity, nor of the equality of two durations. If we think we have this intuition, this is an illusion. We replace it by the aid of certain rules which we apply almost always without taking count of them.
…We …choose these rules, not because they are true, but because they are the most convenient, and we may recapitulate them as follows: "The simultaneity of two events, or the order of their succession, the equality of two durations, are to be so defined that the enunciation of the natural laws may be as simple as possible. In other words, all these rules, all these definitions, are only the fruit of an unconscious opportunism."”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 2: The Measure of Time

Law , Nature , Thinking , Success

“It doth repent me; words are quick and vain;
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus, Act I, l. 304
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

“He's an emotional guy, but I don't believe what went on the field tonight outside of baseball deserves any words.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Scott Rolen
2004

Guy

“I don't think he [ Josef Albers ] ever realized that it was his discipline that I came for. Besides, my response to what I learned from him was just the opposite of what he intended... I was very hesitant about arbitrarily designing forms and selecting colors that would achieve some predetermined result, because I didn't have any ideas to support that sort of thing – I didn't want color to serve me, in other words.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1960's, The Bride and the Bachelors, (1962), pp. 199-200

Color , Idea , Support , Thinking

“I leave you but the sound of many a word
In mocking echoes haply overheard,
I sang to heaven. My exile made me free,
from world to world, from all worlds carried me.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

The Poet's Testament http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-poet-s-testament/
Other works

World

“Let me tell you something. This is my playpen, and I get the last word.”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Being cocky
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xn3kw50kS0&feature=related

“We can suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense, that this ambitious term has. If there is a universe, its aim is not conjectured yet; we have not yet conjectured the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

Cabe ir más lejos; cabe sospechar que no hay universo en el sentido orgánico, unificador, que tiene esa ambiciosa palabra. Si lo hay, falta conjeturar su propósito; falta conjeturar las palabras, las definiciones, las etimologías, las sinonimias, del secreto diccionario de Dios.
As translated by Lilia Graciela Vázquez
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
Variant: We can go further; we suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense of that ambitious word. If there is, we must conjecture its purpose; we must conjecture the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God.

God , Secret , Sense , Universe

“Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself.”

Kevin Rudd (1957) Australian politician, 26th Prime Minister of Australia

Rudd's first speech as Labor leader, 5 December 2006, 13 February 2008, The Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20876,20876230-601,00.html,
2006

“"Why don't we just leave this room today forgetting the word 'earmark'?"-June 2007”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

[Darling, Brian, Pelosi Lets Earmarks Rule the Day in Congress, Human Events, 64, 34, October 6, 2008, 2008-11-22]
2000s

Forgetting

“"Groping" and "muddling through" is usually described as a solution by trial and error…. a series of trials, each of which attempts to correct the error committed by the preceding and, on the whole, the errors diminished as we proceed and the successive trials come closer and closer to the desired final result…. we may wish a better characterization…"successive trials" or "successive corrections" or "successive approximations."… You use successive approximations when… looking for a word in the dictionary… A mathematician may apply the term… to a highly sophisticated procedure… to treat some very advanced problem… that he cannot treat otherwise. The term even applies to science as a whole; the scientific theories which succeed each other, each claiming a better explanation… may appear as successive approximations to the truth.
Therefore, the teacher should not discourage his students from using trial and error—on the contrary, he should encourage the intelligent use of the fundamental method of successive approximations. Yet he should convincingly show that for… many… situations, straightforward algebra is more efficient than successive approximations.”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

George Pólya, Mathematical Discovery: On Understanding, Learning, and Teaching Problem Solving (1962)

Truth , Error , Intelligence , Problem

“By inner experience I understand that which one usually calls mystical experience: the states of ecstasy, of rapture, at least of meditated emotion. But I am thinking less of confessional experience, to which one has had to adhere up to now, than of an experience laid bare, free of ties, even of an origin, of any confession whatever. This is why I don’t like the word mystical.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 3

Understanding , Thinking

“It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

“To Mr. Benbow,” Political Register (29 November 1817).

Life , Boy , Sense , Learning

“but the speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St. David's, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/125/mode/1up p. 125

“Ali Gum'a: There must be four witnesses to testify against the adulterer. They must testify that they saw them having sex.
Interviewer: In other words, that is impossible.
Ali Gum'a: Exactly. This cannot happen unless someone is weary of living and decides to confess.”

Ali Gomaa (1951) Egyptian imam

Mufti of Egypt Ali Gum'a Confronted with Questions about the Treatment of Women in Islam and Blames "Secularists" for Terrorism Worldwide, MEMRI, September 13, 2007 http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1586.htm,

Sex

“There's a standard Internet phenomenon (I generalize) of a Sneer Club of people who enjoy getting together and picking on designated targets. Sneer Clubs (I expect) attract people with high Dark Triad characteristics, which is (I suspect) where Asshole Internet Atheists come from - if you get a club together for the purpose of sneering at religious people, it doesn't matter that God doesn't actually exist, the club attracts psychologically f'd-up people. Bullies, in a word, people who are powerfully reinforced by getting in what feels like good hits on Designated Targets, in the company of others doing the same and congratulating each other on it.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

from a comment on reddit (January 2015) http://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/2n3yh5/what_is_it_with_dark_lord_potter_and_hpmor/cmad6x3?context=3

God , People , Feeling

“Tunis. My head is full of the impressions of last night's walk. Art-Nature-Self. Went to work at once and painted in watercolour in the Arab quarter. Began the synthesis of urban architecture and pictorial architecture. Not yet pure, but quite attractive, somewhat too much of the mood, the enthusiasm of traveling in it-the Self, in a word. Things will no doubt get more objective later, once the intoxication has worn off a bit.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note, 7 April 1914; # 926-f; as cited by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee Part Four', : Klee as an Expressionist and Constructivist Painter http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev27.html
The evening of their arrival, Dr. Jaggi took the 3 artists Klee, August Macke and Louis Moilliet on 'a nocturnal walk through the Arab city' Tunis. Klee wrote this note next day.
1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Art , Travel , Mood , Nature

“The same word we love and hate, leaves in different directions, taking different paths.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“A Word,” p. 54
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”

Love , Hate

“Like the use of the word 'concupiscence' in an earlier age to describe sexual desire, the use of the word 'pollution' to describe essential aspects of the productive activities of an industrial society represents an attempt to defame an entirely proper human capacity by means of using an evil sounding name for it.”

George Reisman (1937) American economist

Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996)

Age , Evil

“I took this stuff I got out of your [O-ring] seal and I put it in ice water, and I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while and then undo it it doesn't stretch back. It stays the same dimension. In other words, for a few seconds at least, and more seconds than that, there is no resilience in this particular material when it is at a temperature of 32 degrees. I believe that has some significance for our problem.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

statement at hearing by Rogers Commission, 11 February 1986, Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, volume 4, p. 680 http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v4part4.htm#4; also quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick, p. 423

Problem , Water

“I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

2000s, There Is No God (2005)

God , People , Faith , Way

“[Register] is set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1970s and later, Cohesion in English (English Language), 1976, p. 23 cited in: Helen Leckie-Tarry (1998) Language and Context. p. 6.

“Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is. We change our state at birth, and come into the world of air and sense and myriad existence; we change our state at death and enter a region of—what?”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

Raymond, p. 298 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t80k3mq4s;view=1up;seq=340
Raymond, or Life and Death (1916)

Death , World , Fear , Birth

“Akira Toriyama: That's a tough question. I thought of Piccolo first, and I wanted to draw him as a scary character, and it was only afterwards that I had to come up with a species. Since they have antennae, I thought they looked like slugs. So "Namekian" is a play on words, but I didn't think too deeply about it. I don't think they're plants, but they may be hermaphrodites.”

Akira Toriyama (1955) manga artist and video game character designer

"Shonen Jump interviews Akira Toriyama http://www.gamespot.com/pages/unions/read_article.php?topic_id=24686028&union_id=3216
Interview with Shōnen Jump

Question , Thinking , Drawing

“In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music - all with love. In other words, create a magic world.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 6.

Love , World , Music , Problem

“Thoughts about the art of portraiture. Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface (this can be done by the photographic plate), but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (1901), # 136, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902

Truth , Art , Heart

“All these words we use, anybody can be a genius now. It used to be you had to have a thought no one ever had before or you had to invent a number. Now, it’s like, “Hey, I’ve got a cup in case we need another cup.””

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

“Dude, you’re a genius!
http://splitsider.com/2013/02/the-annotated-wisdom-of-louis-c-k/

“Research is something that everyone can do, and everyone ought to do. It is simply collecting information and thinking systematically about it. The word ‘research’ carries overtones of abstruse statistics and complex methods, white coats and computers. Some social research is highly specialised but most is not; much of the best research is logically very straightforward. Useful research on many problems can be done with small resources, and should be a regular part of the life of any thoughtful person involved in social action.”

Raewyn Connell (1944) Australian sociologist

Raewyn Connell et al. (1975). How to do small surveys – a guide for students in sociology, kindred industries and allied trades. School of Social Sciences. Flinders University. p. 1.

Life , Problem , Thinking , Parting

“Music allows a person to express their deepest thoughts, thoughts that cannot be expressed with just words. I am often asked how I begin a song or develop a melody from nothing. That is the spiritual aspect of creating. Finding something deep within yourself that can only be created by you.”

Bradley Joseph (1965) Composer, pianist, keyboardist, arranger, producer, recording artist

Interview with Bradley Joseph, The Spiritual Significance Of Music, World Edition http://www.xtrememusic.org/world/joseph_bradley.pdf http://www.xtrememusic.org/new.html (from extrememusic.org) http://xtrememusic.org/world.html

Music , Personality

“I'm afraid love is just a word.”

Harry Mulisch (1927–2010) Dutch author

Interview about the love of his life - magazine Hollands Diep (July/August 2010)

Love

“Intuition is usually the first word, and is sometimes the last word, but should never be the only word.”

David H. Levy (1948) Canadian astronomer

Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)

“For me, poetry is the colour of Elizabeth Taylor's eyes, or the pauses in Pinter's plays - only the pauses, not the words.”

Roger Lewis (1960) Welsh academic and biographer

Evening Standard, Mon 31 Oct 2011, p16

“Painting is but another word for feeling.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher October 1821
1820s

Feeling , Painting

“Now, some may ask why we don't get rid of the bases, since the Soviet Government declares today that it has only peaceful intentions. The answer is that whenever the fear and suspicions that caused us and our Allies to take measures for collective self-defense are removed, the reason for our maintaining bases will be removed. In other words, the only possible solution of this problem lies in mutual, rather than unilateral action leading toward disarmament.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Remarks during a radio address in Moscow, quoted in "1959 Year In Review: Death of John Foster Dulles," http://www.upi.com/Audio/Year_in_Review/Events-of-1959/Death-of-John-Foster-Dulles/12295509433704-3/#title UPI.com (1959)
1950s

Fear , Peace , Problem

“"Every person may freely speak, write, or publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right" That is in the constitution of nearly every State in the Union, and the intention of that is to cover slanderous words -- to cover a case where a man under pretence of enjoying the freedom of speech falsely assails or accuses his neighbor. Of course he should be held responsible for that abuse.”

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

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Freedom , Personality , Falseness

“One is that we are all responsible for our actions, our behavior, and our words, and we must take responsibility for everything we say and do. When you get your head wrapped around that, you can no longer think of life as a series of random events - you participate in life in a way you didn't previously. I am the architect of my destiny. I am in charge. I bring that to me, or I push that away. You can no longer blame other people for things that happened to you. The other is that there is order in the universe, even though it looks like chaos. We separate the world into categories: this is good and this is bad. But life is set up to trick us. It's a series of illusions we invest in. And ultimately those investments don't serve our understanding, because physicality is always going to let you down, because physicality doesn't last.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonnarama!, Vanity Fair, 2008-05-01 http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/05/madonna200805,
About Kabbalah

Life , People , World , Way

“I want the word that burns into my heart
Like God's coal alive on the Prophet's tongue.
I would listen now while memory is ablaze
To seal your testament within my soul.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

Soldier and Son

God , Soul , Memory

“The words of the Constitution … are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

The Supreme Court, vol. 3, no. 1, Parliamentary Affairs (London, Winter 1949).
Other writings

Life , Justice , History , Decision

“Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word — the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.”

Philip Larkin book The Whitsun Weddings

"MCMXIV"
The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

Men , Marriage , Change , Past

“We do not use the word “ressentiment” because of a special predilection for the French language, but because we did not succeed in translating it into German. Moreover, Nietzsche has made it a terminus technicus. In the natural meaning of the French word I detect two elements. First of all, ressentiment is the repeated experiencing and reliving of a particular emotional response reaction against someone else. The continual reliving of the emotion sinks it more deeply into the center of the personality, but concomitantly removes it from the person's zone of action and expression. It is not a mere intellectual recollection of the emotion and of the events to which it “responded”—it is a re-experiencing of the emotion itself, a renewal of the original feeling. Secondly, the word implies that the quality of this emotion is negative, i. e., that it contains a movement of hostility. Perhaps the German word “Groll” (rancor) comes closest to the essential meaning of the term. “Rancor” is just such a suppressed wrath, independent of the ego's activity, which moves obscurely through the mind. It finally takes shape through the repeated reliving of intentionalities of hatred or other hostile emotions. In itself it does not contain a specific hostile intention, but it nourishes any number of such intentions.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility , Feeling , Nature , Personality

“Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the calm words of peace spoken by the conquering nation, saying to the foe that lay prostrate at its feet: "This is our only revenge — that you join us in lifting into the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars for ever and ever, the immortal principles of truth and justice: that all men, white or black, shall be free, and shall stand equal before the law."”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)

Men , Truth , Peace , Justice

“Proper evaluations of words and letters in their phonetic and associated sense can bring the people of earth to the clear light of pure cosmic wisdom.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

Liner notes for Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (1966)

Wisdom , People , Sense , Light

“My hon. Friend must be aware of the words used by the Chancellor on Tuesday, when he said that, this year, the Government expect to make a surplus of £14 billion—part of which will be used to pay off the national debt. In those circumstances, would it not be more appropriate and beneficial to the rest of the world if more money were given for overseas aid and to assist the very poor countries in the usary levels of debt repayments that they are forced into at present?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/17/overseas-development in the House of Commons (17 March 1989).
1980s

Money , World , Parting , Country

“Questions of convergence under an infinite time horizon will depend so much on epsilontic refinements in the system of assumptions — and on the infinite constancy of these refinements — that we are humanly speaking absolutely certain of getting infinite time horizon results which have no relevance to concrete reality. And in particular we are absolutely certain of getting irrelevant results if such epsilontic exercises are made under the assumption of a constant technology. 'In the long run we are all dead.' These words by Keynes ought to be engraved in marble and put on the desk of all epsilontologists, in growth theory under an infinite horizon.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch (1970) "Econometrics in the World of Today." University of Oslo, Institute of Economics, 1971; As quoted in Robert Johnston, Graham Clark. Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery. Pearson Education, 2005. p. 347
1970s and later

Exercises , Question , Reality , Time

“Firmly incased in this solid rocky structure, beyond the power of nature's storms or of the ruthless hand of the destroyer, the outline drawings of God's great plan have stood for four thousand years, prepared to give their testimony at the time appointed, in corroboration of the similarly revealed, but for ages hidden, testimony of the sure Word of Prophecy. The testimony of this "Witness to the Lord in the land of Egypt," like that of the written Word, points with solemn and unerring precision to the final wreck of the old order of things of the "Pit" of oblivion, and to the glorious establishment of the new, under Christ Jesus, the great Chief Corner-stone of God's eternal building, in conformity with the lines of whose glorious character all things worthy of everlasting existence must be built up under him. Amen! Amen! Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven!”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891)

God , Age , Nature , Time

“Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less.”

Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician

as quoted by Gian-Carlo Rota in Words spoken at the memorial service for S. M. Ulam (The Lodge, Los Alamos, New Mexico, May 17, 1984), published in The Mathematical Intelligencer, Volume 6, Number 4 / December, 1984

“The very first words that we, the American nation, spoke were right here in Philadelphia. You know those words: "We the people." It wasn't, "We the conglomerates." It wasn't, "We the corporations."”

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

It was, "We the people."
As quoted by the Philadelphia Daily News (21 October 2005).

People

“One can like that the meaning of the word "art" is to try to make men aware of the greatness that they ignore in them.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

André Malraux, Préface du Temps du mépris (1935), Malraux citations sur www. fondationandremalraux. org http://fondationandremalraux.org/index.php/citations/

Men , Art

“I said to one of them, "Look after the baby, I've got washing," because we've got washable nappies. I said, "Look after the baby. Entertain her, do some words," because she's saying words, "Do any words." So I came back after I scraped all the stuff off, and he was going, "Say, ‘Wigan Athletic!’"”

Tamsin Greig (1966) English actress

About her children.
Appearing on "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross" (31 March 2006)

Baby

“We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations, as with individuals, our interests, soundly calculated, will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties; and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is taken on its word, when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.”

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

1800s, Second Inaugural Address (1805)

War , History

“A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Personality; or, What a Man Is
Essays

Sense

“Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored by the support of this convention for vice president of the United States. I accept the duty to help lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity — and I know we can do this. I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the America that was given to us, with opportunity for the young and security for the old — and I know that we are ready. Our nominee is sure ready. His whole life has prepared him for this moment — to meet serious challenges in a serious way, without excuses and idle words. After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Republican national convention, , quoted in * 2012-08-29
Transcript: Rep. Paul Ryan's Convention Speech
NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/29/160282031/transcript-rep-paul-ryans-convention-speech
2012-09-30

Life , Children , Way , Support

“I hated the devil and was sick with his temptations and tortures; and I could not tell why the voice in his departing words was so sweet that when he returned often and offered himself to me, it was with sorrow I refused him. Then I discovered it was Krishna at His tricks and my hate was changed into laughter.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Bhakti

Hate , Laughter , Change

“I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuchsgang Goethe. Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible, and Nietzsche. Dada m'dada. Dada mhm dada da. It's a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don't want words that other people have invented..”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

1916, Dada Manifesto (1916)

People , Question , Reading

“Moral judgments may conflict with one another. Two conflicting moral judgments cannot both be right. This does not mean that the moral intuition itself is subject to error, but merely that we may fail to disentangle the intuition itself from irrelevances, or may unconsciously pretend to have an intuition when we actually have it not. The intuition itself is infallible; but we can never be sure that we have it, or that we have not confused it, or expressed it falsely in words. In the same way sense-experience is infallible, but we may unconsciously pretend to have it when we have, it not, and we may misdescribe it, and so on.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Philosophy and Living (1939)

Way , Error , Sense , Falseness

“Rudolpho, a thrice-divorced man in his forties, put it aptly: "Relationships with women always begin on a high. When the relationship begins I'm the hero, the rescuer, and superman, all wrapped up in one package. Naturally, it's hot and romantic and the woman adores me. As the relationship progresses and negative things happen, she reacts with hurt, disappointment, or silence. The message is clear: The problem is my fault, it's my creation."In my twenty years of experience with various women, I can barely recall a woman who acknowledged her contribution to a problem. The words, 'I'm sorry. I screwed up,' or, 'That's my problem and I want to work on changing the way I react,' are not what I hear."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

"A Woman" Is an Abstraction, p. 51
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Women , Disappointment , Way , Nature

“The Blockade Laws are about as rascally an invention as the old Corn Laws. Suppose Tom Sayers lived in a street, and on the opposite side lived a shopkeeper with whom he has been in the habit of dealing. Tom quarrels with his shopkeeper and forthwith sends him a challenge to fight, which is accepted. Tom, being a powerful man, sends word to each and every householder in the street that he is going to fight the shopkeeper, and that until he has finished fighting no person in the street must have any dealings with the shopkeeper. "We have nothing to do with your quarrel," say the inhabitants, "and you have no right to stop our dealings with the shopkeeper."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to Henry Asworth (3 September 1864), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 916.
1860s

Law , Fight , Personality

“This word 'imminent' keeps coming up. The President never said that there was an imminent threat.”

Paul Wolfowitz (1943) American politician, diplomat, and technocrat

On the Roger Hedgecock Show ( transcript http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040206-0428.html) (February 6, 2004).

“Once we have tasted the juice of words, our mind can no longer pass them by. We drink thought from them.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Drink

“!-- I come from the Arts Lab. Most of the writing I used to do was used for performance, so consequently I learnt that when you are reading a poem it has to read properly, which is to do with syllables and stresses. What takes me the longest with my fine writing, like say Voice of the Fire, is reading it through and finding the bits where it clunks, where it’s one syllable too long, and once you find that rhythm – the reader probably won’t be aware of it, consciously, but there is a tidal wave embedded in the prose that the reader is responding to. In the last chapter of Voice in the Fire, where it is actually me talking in my own voice, I don’t use the word ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘mine’. I don’t know why – perhaps I had been reading that Private Eye column where it is all ‘I’ ‘I’ ‘I’ and started to feel a bit self-conscious about it – but --> I thought if I can still be the central voice but without having an ‘I’ there, and by not having it there, it makes it easier for the reader to slip into the consciousness of the narrator. If you remove the letter ‘I’ it becomes a universal I. Everybody is the author walking down those streets while they are in the prose.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Art , Feeling , Universe , Reading

“The true poem rests between the words.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"Servants to Thought"
Shades of the World (1985)

“Words are real if other people think they understand their meaning.”

Lindsey Davis book Saturnalia

Saturnalia

People , Understanding , Thinking

“Real friends are those people who will stand for you expressing yourself fully, who will go out of their way to support you to keep your word, to go the extra mile, to get out of the box, to make your dreams come true.”

Nicholas Lore (1944) American social scientist

The Pathfinder (1998)

People , Dreams , Way , Support

“O Lallo, as the words of the Lord come to me, so do I express them.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak Dev ji (1469 - 1539)

“That's the offence of the Christian schools; they are exercising government. That's the offence of every Christian who moves out and applies the word of God to anything; he's exercising government. And this the Romans would not tolerate nor will the modern state.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dominion (n. d.)

God , School , Exercises

“The immanent purpose is an intrinsic property of living beings, without it, they would not exist. Consider the autonomous function units and their components: organs, tissues, isolated cells, as well as other properties such as nutrition, body defense, growth, reproduction, to which they are subject at the end. When it comes to these properties, biologists do not argue; but if you pronounce the word purpose, there is a public outcry. Probably because they do not distinguish the purpose of fact or immanent, the trascendental purpose. Of the latter, the biologist has little or nothing to say; it is a matter of metaphysics.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 2
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Original: La finalité immanente est une propriété intrinseque des etres vivants, sans elle, ils n'existeraient pas. Considérés en tant qu' unités fonctionelles autonomes, leurs constituants: organes, tissus, cellule isolée, au meme titre que les autres propriétés: nutrition, défense de l'organisme, croissance, reproduction, sont subordonnés à une fin. Quand il s'agit de ces propriétes, les biologistes ne se disputent pas; mais si l'on pronounce le mot finalité, c'est un levée de boucliers. Probablement parce qu'ils ne distinguent pas la finalité de fait ou immanente, de la finalité trascendante. Sur cette derniere, le biologiste n'a que peu, sinon rien à dire; elle ressortit de la métaphysique

“It would seem that making unusual connections is unusually difficult and, often, rather "indirect"—be it via words, images, or whatever. The bizarre structures used by mnemonist (and, presumably unknowingly, by each of us) suggests that arbitrary connections require devious pathways.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

K-Linesː A Theory of Memory (1980)

“On the same day as I started to keep my own pillow-book -- I met my future husband for the first time. I was six, he was ten. We did not exchange a word. He had been hand-picked by my father's publisher.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Nagiko's journal for Sep 16 1993
The Pillow Book

Books , Time , Future

“I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq… And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

According to Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath, said by Bush to him, apparently in the same June 2003 meeting, as reported by BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4317498.stm. Shaath later clarified this with "We understood that he was illustrating [in his comments] his strong faith and his belief that this is what God wanted." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4320586.stm, i.e. Shaath didn't take Bush's statement literally.
Denied by White House spokesperson Scott McClellan, October 6, 2005. Denied also by Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the meeting in question. Abbas said "This report is not true. I have never heard President Bush talking about religion as a reason behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush has never mentioned that in front of me on any occasion and specifically not during my visit in 2003." http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/abbas-denies-bushs-mission-from-god-remark/2005/10/08/1128563027485.html.
Attributed, Disputed

God , Peace , Feeling , Fight