Quotes about wording
page 54

“Now begins the true pilgrimage: Parsifal with the lance in hand! Here begins the symbol of renunciation! The renunciation lies, symbolically expressed, in the words, with the lance in hand! A renunciation is first, then, a renunciation in the true sense of the word, when one does not do something that one has recognized as desirable and has wished to do. The sojourn of Parsifal with the lance in hand corresponds to the 40 days that Christ shall have spent in the wastelands. It corresponds to the trials and tribulations which all candidates of all the old religions, of all mystical secret societies etc. had to undergo, before they could become initiates. This sojourn also corresponds therefore, to the 40 days of the fast and abstention, which yet today the initiates of a mystical society impose on their candidates as a test before they are left to study the mystical secret, salvational — teachings.”

Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer

II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)

Secret, Religion, Sense, Study

“Those things are inextricable bound up in my mind, with words I make an image and vice versa.”

Jan Theuninck (1954) painter, poet

As quoted in Boekgrrls (8 March 2004) http://www.boekgrrls.nl/BgDiversen/Onderwerpen/gedichten_over_schilderijen.htm

“Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 738, 866 (1824)

Law, Exercises

“I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I'll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-02-tyson-saraceno_x.htm
On himself

Art, Literature, Science

“While they are growing up, the young need adults who can suggest principles and values to them. They feel in need of people who can teach by their example, more than by their words, to expend themselves for high ideals.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Homily on the fourth anniversary of the death of John Paul II http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20090402_anniv-morte-gpii_en.html (2 April 2009) 2009

People, Feeling

“"Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance." … What excellent advice it is, and how it was beaten into my generation of schoolboys… But one may tire of even the best advice, as one may tire of writing according to these precepts. Would we wish to be without the heraldic splendour and torchlight processions that are the sentences of Sir Thomas Browne? Would we wish to sacrifice the orotund, Latinate pronouncements of Samuel Johnson? Would we wish that Dickens had written in the style recommended by the brothers Fowler, who framed the rules I have quoted; what would then have happened to Seth Pecksniff, Wilkins Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, I ask you?”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Writing (1990), he here quotes from The King's English (1906) by Henry Watson Fowler & Francis George Fowler

Quotes

“I am an autodidact - that's why I use bigger words than I should. It's a classic sign.”

Mark Leckey (1964) British artist

Guardian interview (2008)

“nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we are not poets.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

A Poet's Advice (1958)

Time

“According to reports, Britney Spears has told family and close friends that she and her new husband Kevin Federline are expecting their first child. So far, no word on whether it will be a pimp or a ho.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04aupdate.phtml

Family

“With the passage of time, whatever a man had done, whether for good or evil, with the man's bodily organs, left the man's parish unaffected: only a man's thoughts and dreams could outlive him, in any serious sense, and these might survive with perhaps augmenting influence: so that Kennaston had come to think artistic creation in words — since marble and canvas inevitably perished — was the one, possibly, worth-while employment of human life. But here was a crude corporal deed which bluntly destroyed thoughts, and annihilated dreams by wholesale. To Kennaston this seemed the one real tragedy that could be staged on earth….”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 24 : Deals with Pen Scratches

Life, Dreams, Thinking, Sense

“And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burnin' coal. Pourin' off of every page, like it was written in my soul from me to you…”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

Soul

“[in reference to a two-word comment from a guest] …I used to dance under that name.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), Commonly repeated

Dance

“Chiefly responsible for the bad name of anarchism are the supporters of political power, but anarchists too have contributed by being vague and perfunctory concerning the social side of their doctrine and by frequently espousing the cause of rebellion without insisting on its social illumination. Antisocial impulses and practices may only too easily find in anarchism a pseudo-rational justification. For these reasons the adjective "social" is a useful addition to the word "anarchism"—in order to be truly anarchist one has to be social.”

Giovanni Baldelli (1914–1986) Anarchist theorist

Source: Social Anarchism (1971), p. 6

Support

“Although I was quiet as a child, I had this resistless passion inside of me–this need and hunger to create my own world. Poetry filled that void, and its words fed that vital necessity of ownership.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On her poetry as a child http://reelladies.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/reel-lady-masiela-lusha/

Hunger, World, Passion

“The spark within is akin to the Divine Ground. By identifying ourselves with the first we can come to unitive knowledge of the second. These empirical facts of the spiritual life have been variously rationalized in terms of the theologies of the various religions. The Hindus categorically affirm that Thou art That — that the indwelling Atman is the same as Brahman. For orthodox Christianity there is not an identity between the spark and God. Union of the human spirit with God takes place — union so complete that the word deification is applied to it; but it is not the union of identical substances. According to Christian theology, the saint is “deified,” not because Atman is Brahman, but because God has assimilated the purified human spirit in to the divine substance by an act of grace. Islamic theology seems to make a similar distinction. The Sufi, Mansur, was executed for giving to the words “union” and “deification” the literal meaning which they bear in the Hindu tradition. For our present purposes, however, the significant fact is that these words are actually used by Christians and Mohammedans to describe the empirical facts of metaphysical realization by means of direct, super-rational intuition.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (1944)

Life, God, Religion, Art

“I loved playing an open hand against all the Jewish political functionaries … For me, 'open hand' is a winged word.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

As quoted in Eichmann Before Jerusalem by Bettina Stangneth (2015).

Love

“You've got to understand… these days I just can't afford to get involved [with the press]. People - they turn on you… on me. They write horrible things, deliberately twisting my words.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

On his growing wariness in talking to the media, Spin Magazine, Autumn 2007.
People

People, Understanding

“I've been very poorly but now I feel prime,
I've been out today for the very first time.
I felt like a lad as I walked down the road,
Then I met Old Jones and he said, "Well I'm blowed!
My word you do look queer!
My word you do look queer!
Oh, dear! You look dreadful: you've had a near shave,
You look like a man with one foot in the grave."
I said, "Bosh! l'm better; it's true I've been ill."
He said, "I'm delighted you're better, but still,
I wish you'd a thousand for me in your will.
My word, you do look queer!"”

Stanley Holloway (1890–1982) English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist

My Word! You Do Look Queer!

Feeling, Time

“and you don’t think any of our current religions hold a key to that answer, do you?
we have talked about this before. your religions (collective you, meaning all mankind) are artificial things, like your morality sets. their correspondence to reality is limited, there is not a one-to-one relationship. as far as I am concerned, they are little more than word games. a logic system should be built upon a foundation of truth and should not have to be taken on faith—and faith is at the core of too many of your religions. if there is a truth to the universe, then that truth will also suggest a religion/morality set that will be every bit as binding as the ethical system at my core. were there presently a religion or morality that had that one-to-one correspondence with reality, i would accept it wholeheartedly. it would be impossible not to accept it; it would be the key to understanding the nature of god. as yet, there is no system that fulfills those conditions. i know of no way to develop such a system without at least one provable fact about god at its core. because of that, because there is no fact, i can only suspect that there is no god.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 15 (p. 71; Dr. Auberson's question; HARLIE's answer)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

God, Truth, Faith, Religion

“My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse
And shut upon obscurity; my acts
Cast to their opposites by impatient violence
Break up the sequent path; they fly
On a circumference to avoid the centre.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Darkness And Light"
The Still Centre (1939)

Light, Flying

“He, without voice and opening of lips, formed in my soul these words: Herewith is the Fiend overcome. These words said our Lord, meaning His blessed Passion as He shewed it afore.
On this shewed our Lord that the Passion of Him is the overcoming of the Fiend. God shewed that the Fiend hath now the same malice that he had afore the Incarnation. And as sore he travaileth, and as continually he seeth that all souls of salvation escape him, worshipfully, by the virtue of Christ’s precious Passion. And that is his sorrow, and full evil is he ashamed: for all that God suffereth him to do turneth us to joy and him to shame and woe. And he hath as much sorrow when God giveth him leave to work, as when he worketh not: and that is for that he may never do as ill as he would: for his might is all taken into God’s hand.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifth Revelation, Chapter 13

God, Soul, Passion, Evil

“Mathematics and philosophy are cultivated by two different classes of men: some make them an object of pursuit, either in consequence of their situation, or through a desire to render themselves illustrious, by extending their limits; while others pursue them for mere amusement, or by a natural taste which inclines them to that branch of knowledge. It is for the latter class of mathematicians and philosophers that this work is chiefly intended j and yet, at the same time, we entertain a hope that some parts of it will prove interesting to the former. In a word, it may serve to stimulate the ardour of those who begin to study these sciences; and it is for this reason that in most elementary books the authors endeavour to simplify the questions designed for exercising beginners, by proposing them in a less abstract manner than is employed in the pure mathematics, and so as to interest and excite the reader's curiosity. Thus, for example, if it were proposed simply to divide a triangle into three, four, or five equal parts, by lines drawn from a determinate point within it, in this form the problem could be interesting to none but those really possessed of a taste for geometry. But if, instead of proposing it in this abstract manner, we should say: "A father on his death-bed bequeathed to his three sons a triangular field, to be equally divided among them: and as there is a well in the field, which must be common to the three co-heirs, and from which the lines of division must necessarily proceed, how is the field to be divided so as to fulfill the intention of the testator?"”

Jean-Étienne Montucla (1725–1799) French mathematician

This way of stating it will, no doubt, create a desire in most minds to discover the method of solving the problem; and however little taste people may possess for real science, they will be tempted to try iheir ingenuity in finding the answer to such a question at this. Source: Preface to Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. (1803), p. ii; As cited in: Tobias George Smollett. The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature http://books.google.com/books?id=T8APAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA410, Volume 38, (1803), p. 410

Death, Men, People, Books

“I will not weary you with the proof of this. James Madison, who knew perhaps as well as any one what the makers of the Constitution meant, said, 'We intend this Constitution to be the great charter of Human Liberty to the unborn millions who shall enjoy its protection, and who should never see that such an institution as slavery was ever known in our midst'. And the Congress of 1787, in resigning its functions, echoed the meaning of his words in saying, 'Let it never be forgotten that the cause of the United States is the cause of human nature — not of white men nor black men nor red men nor brown men — but of man, of mankind.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Men, Nature

“I name next a word that it requires some courage to utter these days—the word of economy. It is like a echo from the distant period of my early life. The wealth of the country, and the vast comparative diffusion of comfort, has, I am afraid, put public economy, at least in its more rigid and severe forms, sadly out of countenance.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (2 October 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 377.
1890s

Life, Courage, Distant, Country

“Nothing can help us unless we rely on ourselves. Only when we realize this will we be on the right track. The Buddha attained all of the truths he taught before he put them into words. … He was like the scientists who experiment and get results before writing textbooks. … If we cling merely to the concepts of the Dhamma, simply memorizing them, we're no more than consumers. Only if we make ourselves into producers, so that others can consume, will we be acting properly.”

Ajahn Lee (1907–1961)

Words of Ajaan Lee (2011)

Truth, Help

“The same ‘ practical’ viewpoint is dominant in Marx’ s conception of the cognitive functions of the mind and its role in the historical process; ‘ practical’ is always regarded as implying ‘ social’, and ‘ social life is practical by its very essence’. So is the task of philosophy as defined in the eleventh Thesis, in what are perhaps Marx’ s most-quoted words: ‘ The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’ It would be a caricature of Marx’ s thought to read this as meaning that it was not important to observe or analyse society and that only direct revolutionary action mattered. The whole context shows that it is a formula expressing in a nutshell the viewpoint of ‘ practical philosophy’ as opposed to the ‘ contemplative’ attitude of Hegel or Feuerbach – the viewpoint which Hess, and through him Cieszkowski, suggested to Marx and which became the philosophical nucleus of Marxism. To understand the world does not mean considering it from outside, judging it morally or explaining it scientifically; it means society understanding itself, an act in which the subject changes the object by the very fact of understanding it.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume I, The Founders, pp. 143-4

Life, World, Way, Quotes

“Ouspensky records a conversation in St. Petersburg during the summer of 1916 in which Gurdjieff discussed the problem of communication, and the impossibility of conveying in our ordinary language ideas which are intelligible and obvious only for a higher state of consciousness. Speaking of the unity between man, the Universe, and God, he said that the objective knowledge by which alone this unity is to be understood can never be expressed in words or logical forms. At this point, Gurdjieff made a statement which is a key to the understanding of his own subsequent writings. He said:

Realising the imperfection and weakness of ordinary language, the people who have possessed objective knowledge have tried to express the idea of unity in ‘myths,’ in ‘symbols,’ and in particular ‘verbal formulas,’ which, having been transmitted without alteration, have carried on the idea from one school to another, often from one epoch to another.

In All and Everything Gurdjieff makes extensive use of these three forms, that is, symbol, myth, and verbal formula….”

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

Gurdjieff’s All and Everything (1950)

God, People, School, Intelligence

“But whoever thinks that beauty is something he can enjoy exclusively for himself just by abandoning other people and closing his eyes to the human life of which he is part—he is not the friend of beauty. He ends up either as Pétur Þríhross's poet, or his secretary. He who doesn't fight every day of his life to the last breath against the representatives of evil, against the living images of evil who rule Sviðinsvík—he blasphemes by taking the word beauty into his mouth.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Örn Úlfar
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Life, People, Beauty, Thinking

“The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

Quoted by James Thurber in The Bermudian (November 1950)

“From individual independence he proceeded to association. If it was inconsistent with the dignity of human nature to say that men were gregarious animals, like wild horses and wild geese, it surely could offend no delicacy to say they were social animals by nature, that there were mutual sympathies, and, above all, the sweet attraction of the sexes, which must soon draw them together in little groups, and by degrees in larger congregations, for mutual assistance and defence. And this must have happened before any formal covenant, by express words or signs, was concluded. When general counsels and deliberations commenced, the objects could be no other than the mutual defence and security of every individual for his life, his liberty, and his property. To suppose them to have surrendered these in any other way than by equal rules and general consent was to suppose them idiots or madmen, whose acts were never binding. To suppose them surprised by fraud, or compelled by force, into any other compact, such fraud and such force could confer no obligation. Every man had a right to trample it under foot whenever he pleased. In short, he asserted these rights to be derived only from nature and the author of nature; that they were inherent, inalienable, and indefeasible by any laws, pacts, contracts, covenants, or stipulations, which man could devise.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1810s, Letter to William Tudor (1818)

Life, Men, Law, Sex

“Eve,” I said, “please stop for a minute. I think I finally get it. As you read to me aloud, the words become alive for me, and I can see pictures in my head. But when I try to read, all those little letters just confuse me. Because it’s the white of the page between the words that truly grab me. Do I make any sense? Reading, I do believe, is a very unnatural thing. But to listen to a story, like sitting around a campfire, is very natural.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Nature, Thinking, Sense, Reading

“It's a pity we don't whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Pastor Jón Prímus
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Bird

“Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time — calling upon God.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

On responses to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as quoted in AANEWS #958 (14 September 2001)

God, People, Way, Nature

“The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud. The Twilight Saga: New Moon takes the tepid achievement of Twilight (2008), guts it, and leaves it for undead. You know you're in trouble with a sequel when the word of mouth advises you to see the first movie twice instead. Obviously the characters all have. Long opening stretches of this film make utterly no sense unless you walk in knowing the first film, and hopefully both Stephanie Meyer novels, by heart. Edward and Bella spend murky moments glowering at each other and thinking, So, here we are again.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-twilight-saga-new-moon-2009 of The Twilight Saga: New Moon (18 November 2009) Reviews, One-star reviews

Thinking, Sense, Heart

“We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 2, Simplicity, p. 7.

“He chased us all round the studio and we had to lock ourselves into another studio to prevent him getting us. He was a big guy. He came in the following morning and he was alright. I think his management had had a word and said, ‘Look this album is going really well, it’s not a good idea to frighten the life out of people who are helping you make it’. He was quite pleasant, but he never apologised.”

Martin Rushent (1948–2011) English record producer

Serck, Linda, Legendary producer Martin Rushent, 2009, http://www.getreading.co.uk/entertainment/music/s/2061462_legendary_producer_martin_rushent, Get Reading, 6 June 2011

Life, People, Guy, Idea

“Abu 'Abdullah Tariq ibn Shihab al-Bajali al-Ahmasi reported that a man asked the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, after he had put his feet in his stirrups, "What jihad is the best?" He said, "A true word in the presence of a tyrannical ruler."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 195
Sunni Hadith

Peace

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.
…
'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

Love, Life, Wisdom, War

“I counsel you to return to God, to live after the manner of a good Christian, to repent the past, and recur to piety. Otherwise, I make known to you that severe chastisement awaits you, and that you shall be scourged in your substance, your flesh, and your kindred.
Likewise I announce to you that your life is near its end; that if you obey not my words, you will go to hell, and this letter will be brought up against you before the judgment-seat of God, and leave you no way of escape.”

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) Italian Dominican friar and preacher

Io vi conforto di convertirvi a Dio, vivere come è obbligato ogni buon cristiano, dolervi del passato e ridurvi alla pietà. Altrimenti, io vi annunzio che è sopra di voi imminente un gran flagello, e sarete flagellato nella roba, nella persona e nella casa vostra. Vi annunzio ancora, che della vostra vita ce n' è per poco; che, se non farete quel che vi dico, anderete nell'inferno; e questa lettera vi sarà presentata innanzi al tribunale di Dio, nè vi potrete scusare. To the prince of Mirandola, Count Galeotto Pico, brother of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (26 March 1496), as quoted in Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola (1888) http://books.google.com/books?id=7qgTAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA442&dq=%22if+you+obey+not+my+words+you+will+go+to+hell%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rlP2TvvdIoeC2wW1mcWtAg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22if%20you%20obey%20not%20my%20words%20you%20will%20go%20to%20hell%22&f=false by Pasquale Villari, translated by Linda Villari, p. 442; also in Le lettere di Girolamo Savonarola (The letters of Jerome Savonarola), 1933, Roberto Ridolfi, L. S. Olschki, p. 107. http://books.google.com/books?ei=1dclT43LF5GnsALZybGMAg&id=NCs8AAAAMAAJ&dq=%22potrete+scusare%22+savonarola+1496&q=%22potrete+scusare%22+#search_anchor

Life, God, Way, Hell

“[T]his is truly a great country. When true to ourselves we are unmatched. In the words of Irving Berlin, God bless America!”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/945465303210905601 (25 December 2017) 2017

God, Country

“I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1801-01-03) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Art, Personality

“Detente sounds a fine word. And, to the extent that there really has been a relaxation in international tension, it is a fine thing. But the fact remains that throughout this decade of detente, the armed forces of the Soviet Union have increased, are increasing, and show no signs of diminishing.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750 Leader of the Opposition

“There is always this criticism that the lyricism and the poetry and the language and the dialogues of the past, the written word, is not so prevailing now. To some extent, yes. For somebody that has lived through those years and come back, I feel that when I go to concerts and when I go to public events, nobody asks me to recite dialogues from Baghban or Paa (laughs), they say ‘can we have Deewar?’ or ‘Can we have Agneepath?’ or whatever. So I’m assuming, therefore, that there was a lot more strength and value in those dialogues than what we have now. But I think that, in defense of today’s generation, maybe they don’t want it. They don’t like too many words. This generation is very cryptic in the way it communicates, they’ll have just one or two words where we used to use four of five sentences in our time. That attention span has become very short. So they use one or two words, ‘it’s cool’ or ‘you’re rocking’, to describe the whole feeling. That is the style of the younger generation and if this is what they want, we must make films that follow it.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Way, Feeling, Communication, Thinking

“I’ve always resented the word maturity, primarily, I think, because it is most often used as a club. If you do something that someone doesn’t like, you lack maturity, regardless of the actual merits of your action. Too, it seems to me that what is most often called maturity is nothing more than disengagement from life. If you meet life squarely, you are likely to make mistakes, do things you wish you hadn’t, say things you wish you could retract or phrase more felicitously, and, in short, fumble your way along. Those “mature” people whose lives are even without a single sour note or a single mistake, who never fumble, manage only at the cost of original thought and original action. They do without the successes as well as the failures. This has never appealed to me and that is another reason I could never accept the common image of maturity that was presented to me.”

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 20 (p. 241).

Life, People, Way, Failure

“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 1, "Atoms in Motion"; section 1-2, "Matter is made of atoms"; p. 1-2
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

World, Imagination, Knowledge, Thinking

“Nature loves to hide her secrets, and she does not suffer the hidden truth about the essential nature of the gods to be flung in naked words to the ears of the profane…”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

"Oration VII": "To the Cynic Heracleios", as quoted in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 105; also in Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism (2005) by Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa, p. 25
General sources

Love, God, Truth, Secret

“We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King

Way, Study, Reading

“True religious leaders love and worship the whole creation, seeing it as a manifestation of divine consciousness. They see the unity behind the diversity. However, today, many religious leaders misinterpret the words and experiences of the ancient seers and prophets simply to exploit weak-minded people.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Cultivating Strength & Vitality (2009)

Love, People

“O it is a happy thing to feel ourselves helpless and naught, for then the presence of God is felt to wrap us about so lovingly! Everlasting, infinite, almighty, — these are the words that strengthen us with speaking them.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 332.

God, Happiness, Feeling

“We have had enough perpetually hearing MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE. In the repetition of the word MACHINE, we read the modern artist's ambivalent relationship to mechanical reproduction: on the one hand, the rigorous linear order and uniform application of ink presented by the thrice-repeated type written line celebrates sterility; and on the other hand the content of the sentence itself bemoans the transformation of the industrial paradigm into an aesthetic cliché.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

statement of Lissitzky, 1924; as quoted by Paul Galvez, in 'Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Monkey-Hand October', Vol. 93, (Summer, 2000), published by The MIT Press, pp. 109-137
1915 - 1925

Reading

“Political thought as we understand it began in Athens because the Athenians were a trading people who looked at their contemporaries and saw how differently they organized themselves. If they had not lived where they did and organized their economic lives as they did, they could not have seen the contrast. Given the opportunity, they might not have paid attention to it. The Israelites of the Old Testament narrative were very conscious of their neighbors, Egyptian, Babylonian, and other, not least because they were often reduced to slavery or near-slavery by them. That narrative makes nothing of the fact that Egypt was a bureaucratic theocracy; it emphasizes that the Egyptians did not worship Yahweh. The history of Old Testament politics is the history of a people who did their best to have no politics. They saw themselves as under the direct government of God, with little room to decide their own fate except by obeying or disobeying God’s commandments. Only when God took them at their word and allowed them to choose a king did they become a political society, with familiar problems of competition for office and issues of succession. For the Jews, politics was a fall from grace. For the Greeks, it was an achievement. Many besides Plato thought it a flawed achievement; when historians and philosophers began to articulate its flaws, the history of political thought began among the argumentative Athenians.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 1 : Why Herodotus?

God, Fate, People, History

“We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Life, God, Feeling, Nature

“One cannot, however, avoid saying a few words about individuals who lay down the law to art in the name of art history. Art criticism today is beset by art historians turned inside out to function as prophets of so-called inevitable trends. A determinism similar to that projected into the evolution of past styles is clamped upon art in the making. In this parody of art history, value judgments are deduced from a presumed logic of development, and an ultimatum is issued to artists either to accommodate themselves to these values or be banned from the art of the future.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 147, "Criticism and Its Premises"

Law, Art, History, Past

“Trump: No, I didn't use the word. I never said the word, Bill. I don't know who told you -- I would never use the word. I didn't say the word. I said, "you can tell them to go [beat of silence] themselves."
O'Reilly: But the lips kind of moved in the --
Trump: Well, they might have. No, I didn't say the word. I wouldn't do that. Even I -- hey Bill, even I wouldn't do that, okay. No, I never said the word.”

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

On an interview on The O'Reilly Factor (6 February 2016)
2010s, 2016, February

Silence

“There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 30, part 1, p. 652.

Hope, History, Success, Christ

“It is like a wide embrace gathering all those who have long searched for words of hope… Saddened by the continual strife amongst believers of many confessions and wearied of their intolerance towards each other, I discovered in the Bahá'í teaching the real spirit of Christ so often denied and misunderstood.”

Marie of Edinburgh, Queen of Romania (1875–1938) last Queen consort of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I

qtd. in Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (1944)

Hope, Search, Christ

“Like Enki, king of the abzu, I am successful in finding solutions, and am wise in words.”

Shulgi

In Debate between Bird and Fish, early 2nd millennium BCE. Text online http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr535.htm at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

Success

“I was astonished to be invited to what became the meeting that originated the Agile Manifesto because my work had always been based around building models… The other signatories were kind enough, back in 2001, to write the manifesto using the word “software” (which can include executable models), not “code” (which is more specific.) As such I felt able, in good conscience, to become a signatory to the Manifesto while continuing to promote executable modeling. Ten years on we have a standard action language for agile modeling.”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Mellor (2011) " A Personal Reflection on Agile Ten Years On http://www.infoq.com/articles/personal-reflection-agile-ten-years-mellor" in: InfoQ, Feb 11, 2011.

“The most common thing I hear from teachers is that I’m not ‘mindful of my words’ because whatever I say always comes out as condescending and insulting to them. However, I think my fellow teachers misunderstood the point, those words were so obviously meant to be insulting. So in that regard, I am actually very mindful of my words.”

Amos Yee (1998) blogger

Tumblr postings

Thinking, Teachers

“Henceforth let no woman believe a man's oath, let none believe that a man's speeches can be trustworthy. They, while their mind desires something and longs eagerly to gain it, nothing fear to swear, nothing spare to promise; but as soon as the lust of their greedy mind is satisfied, they fear not then their words, they heed not their perjuries.”
Nunc iam nulla viro iuranti femina credat, nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles; quis dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci, nil metuunt iurare, nihil promittere parcunt: sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libido est, dicta nihil metuere, nihil periuria curant.

Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus

LXIV
Carmina

Fear

“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests sometimes that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Mythical Phase: Symbol as Archetype

Nature, Science, Time

“Some atheists say that Adam could never name all of those animals in one day. When I get all excited I can speak 350 words in a minute. At 300 words in a minute you can name all the animals in 26 minutes. Dog, cat, elephant, aardvark, hamster, etc. Plus you have got to figure that Adam had an extremely high IQ. He came straight from the hand of God, fully programmed. Did you know that he could speak every language in the world? Okay, there was only one language then. The guy could walk, talk, and name all the animals and get married the first day. Adam probably had a super high IQ. No problem for him to name all the animals in a half hour.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

God, World, Dogs, Guy

“Normally we think that it was Jesus’ mission to reveal the mystery of God to us. This he certainly did. But he also revealed to us the mystery of the human person. As the Council declares: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of the human being take on light” (GS 22). First of all, Jesus pointed out the God-dimension of human person.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On God

God, Truth, Thinking, Light

“I am using the word image in a wide meaning, which does not restrict it to the mind's eye as a visual organ. An image in my usage is what Charles Pierce called a sign…”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

“The evidence introduced for political pessimism; the criminal, the lunatic, and the asocial individual, in a word, the second-rate citizen —these are not by nature as one finds them now but have been made so by society. It is said that they have never had a chance to be as they would be according to their nature, but were forced into the situation in which they find themselves through poverty, coercion, and ignorance. They are victims of society.
This defense against political pessimism regarding human nature is at first convincing. It possesses the superiority of dialectical thinking over positivistic thinking. It transforms moral states and qualities into processes. Brutal people do not “exist,” only their brutalization; criminality does not “exist,” only criminalization; stupidity does not “exist,” only stupefaction; self-seeking does not “exist,” only training in egoism; there are no second-rate citizens, only victims of patronization. What political positivism takes to be nature is in reality falsified nature: the suppression of opportunity for human beings. Rousseau knew of two aids who could illustrate his point of view, two classes of human beings who lived before civilization and, consequently, before perversion: the noble savage and the child. Enlightenment literature develops two of its most intimate passions around these two figures: ethnology and pedagogy.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

(describing Rousseau’s philosophy) p. 55
Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983)

People, Stupidity, Literature, Nature

“I said, to the people of the Philippines whence I came, I shall return. Tonight, I repeat those words: I shall return!”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

After his arrival in Australia from the Philippines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEbwuehH35I (30 March 1942)

People

“President Roosevelt […] told me there was no reason for my worrying about my having been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He said some of his best friends and supporters he had in the state of Georgia were among members of the organization. He never in any way, by word or attitude, indicated any doubt about my having been in the Klan nor did he indicate any criticism of me for having been a member of that organization.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Writing in 1968, as quoted in "An open letter to DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz" https://web.archive.org/web/20150630102356/http://spectator.org/articles/63244/will-democrats-apologize-slavery-and-segregation (25 June 2015), by Jeffrey Lord, The American Spectator

Way, Support

“We in America – and men across the earth – have trapped ourselves with that word equality, which is inapplicable to the genus man. I wish we would forget it. Stop its use in our country: Let the communists have it. It isn’t fit for men who fling thei…r dreams across the skies. It is fit only for a leveling down of mankind.”

Lillian Smith (author) (1897–1966) American author, social critic

"Killers of the Dream" Lillian Smith

Men, Dreams, Country, Forgetting

“In the Chinese language, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters, one representing danger and the other, opportunity.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Remarks at the United Negro College Fund, Indianapolis, Indiana (12 April 1959) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 902, Senate Speech Files, Pre-Presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library; also in Remarks at Valley Forge Country Club, Pennsylvania (29 October 1960), Box 914, Senate Speech Files, Pre-Presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Pre-1960

“I hold that the self-authentication of truth, or, in other words, seeing, is the authority, and the only authority there is in the field of religion.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.52

Truth, Religion

“Hit it! With words like Blood, Soldier and Mother…”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), A Dead Song

“You know they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned, it's called a nationalist,
And I say 'really, we're not supposed to use that word?' Do you know what I am? I'm a nationalist.”

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

22 October 2018, as reported 23 October 2018 by Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.in/trump-declares-himself-a-nationalist-while-stumping-for-ted-cruz/articleshow/66327534.cms 2010s, 2018, October

Fashion

“The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life's diversity, men whose spirits shattered the natural wall of the individual body, making nothing of this barrier, set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish.”

Yukio Mishima book Runaway Horses

Runaway Horses (1969), as translated by Michael Gallagher (1973).

Life, Men, World, Way

“The potential conflict inherent in every word, and finding expression in the fact that the use of every word is an individual embodiment of a general concept, is the focal point of semantics understood as a part of linguistics — that is as a science of the meanings of words and the history of such meanings”

Witold Doroszewski (1899–1976) Lexicographer and linguist

Witold Doroszewski, Z zagadiiien leksykografii polskiej [Selected Problems of Polish Lexicography], Warszawa 1954, p. 93; as cited in Schaff (1962;6).

History, Science, Parting

“Fay: Your explanation had the ring of truth about it.. Naturally I disbelieved every word.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act I

Truth, Nature

“"… whatever… you pretend… if any of you be a prayerless person, or a scoffer, or a lover of evil company (Proverbs 13:20), in a word, if you are not a holy, strict, and self-denying Christian, you cannot be saved." (Hebrews 12:14; Matthew 15:14).”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: An Alarm to the Unconverted aka A Sure Guide to Heaven (first published 1671), P. 21.

Lovers, Evil, Personality

“It’s of note that the word 'cosmetic' has its roots in the word 'cosmos.”

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

The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)

“It is very hard to write this way, beginning things backward, and the author hopes the reader will realize this and not grudge this little word of explanation. I know I would be very glad to read anything the reader ever wrote, and I hope the reader will make the same sort of allowances. If any of the readers would care to send me anything they ever wrote, for criticism or advice, I am always at the Café du Dôme any afternoon, talking about Art with Harold Stearns and Sinclair Lewis, and the reader can bring his stuff along with him, or he can send it to me care of my bank, if I have a bank.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Torrents of Spring

Part 2, Ch. 5
Harold Stearns was a once-well-known New York writer and intellectual whom Hemingway knew when they were both living in Paris.
The Torrents of Spring (1926)

Hope, Art, Way, Reading

“A woman. Alive. In the daylight.
He stood, mouth partly open, gaping at the woman. She was young, he could see now as she came closer; probably in her twenties. She wore a wrinkled and dirty white dress. She was very tan, her hair was red. In the dead silence of the afternoon Neville thought he heard the crunch of her shoes in the long grass.
I’ve gone mad. The words presented themselves abruptly. He felt less shock at that possibility than he did at the notion that she was real. He had, in fact, been vaguely preparing himself for just such a delusion. It seemed feasible. The man who died of thirst saw mirages of lakes. Why shouldn’t a man who thirsted for companionship see a woman walking in the sun?”

Richard Matheson book I Am Legend

Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 15

Shoe, Silence, Grass, Sun

“I fell in love — that is the only expression I can think of — at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Poetic Manifesto, published in the Texas Quarterly (Winter 1961)

Love, Behavior, Thinking, Learning

“Who so shall telle a tale after a man,
He moste reherse, as neighe as ever he can,
Everich word, if it be in his charge,
All speke he never so rudely and so large;
Or elles he moste tellen his tale untrewe,
Or feinen thinges, or finden wordes newe.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

General Prologue, l. 733
The Canterbury Tales

“Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for “vulgarity”; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

“What is liberal education,” p. 8
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

Education, Beauty

“So-called electronic communities encourage participation in fragmented, mostly silent, micro-groups who are primarily engaged in dialogues of self-congratulation. In other words, most people lurk; and the ones that post are pleased with themselves.”

Carmen Hermosillo Community manager, essayist, poet, research analyst

"Pandora's Vox", as cited in Menon, Siddhartha, 2007, " A Participation Observation Analysis of the Once & Again Internet Message Bulletin Boards http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/8/4/341.short", Television New Media 8 (4): 345.

People, Communication

“.. drawing, always all my learning had to do with drawing. And I never really thought about color at all. When I first started thinking about color it was sort of out of perversity. In other words, say around 1950 and '51, it occurred to me that something ugly or muddy could be a color as well as something clear and bright and a nameable, beautiful, known color.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about her years 1950-51 - reacting on the general view that her painting art was mainly focused on color and not on drawing / line
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Beauty, Color, Thinking, Learning

““Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?”
“I think… that those are all very different things.”
“You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt.”
“Sir?”
“A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for it sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt,” he said significantly, “draws us onward.””

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 16, “The Wild Hunt” (p. 276)

Love, Life, Men, Flowers

“As used in the Due Process Clauses, 'liberty' most likely refers to 'the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever place one's own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law'. That definition is drawn from the historical roots of the Clauses and is consistent with our Constitution’s text and structure. Both of the Constitution’s Due Process Clauses reach back to Magna Carta. Chapter 39 of the original Magna Carta provided ', No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land'. Although the 1215 version of Magna Carta was in effect for only a few weeks, this provision was later reissued in 1225 with modest changes to its wording as follows: 'No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

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

In his influential commentary on the provision many years later, Sir Edward Coke interpreted the words 'by the law of the land' to mean the same thing as 'by due proces of the common law'. Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015). 2010s

Law, Way, Change, Personality

“In addition to vision-level BHAGs [shorthand for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals], an envisioned future needs what we call vivid description – that is, a vibrant, engaging, and specific description of what it will be like to achieve the BHAG. Think of it as translating the vision from words into pictures, of creating an image that people can carry around in their heads. It is a question of painting a picture with your words. Picture painting is essential for making the 10-to-30- year BHAG tangible in people’s minds.”

Jerry I. Porras (1938) American writer

Source: "Building your company's vision," 1996, p. 74

People, Question, Thinking, Future

“Between things sacred and profane there is this difference among others. In profane matters the instrument derives its worth from the end, and is valued for the most part only in so far as it is a means to that end; and consequently we change the instruments as the end demands, and finally, when the end is no longer pursued, the instruments automatically fall into disuse. But in sacred matters the end invests the instrument with a sanctity of its own. Consequently, there is no changing or varying of the instrument; and when the end has ceased to be pursued, the instrument does not fall out of use, but is directed towards another end. In other words: in the one case we preserve the shell for the sake of the kernel, and discard the shell when we have eaten the kernel; in the other case we raise the shell to the dignity of the kernel, and do not rob it of that dignity even if the kernel withers, but make a new kernel for it.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Sacred and Profane" (1891), p. 41

Change, Parting

“You misunderstood my words when I said that Michelangelo was a stupid artist... Because I have drunk from another source and a new and marvelous thirst burns my lips – how can I still believe in such artists?! I know what you are thinking when you ask me: 'isn't David a superman? This is how I used to feel, this is what I used to think. The majority of the world's great spirits thought it so.... but now a new air has entered my soul, a new song has reached my ears and the whole world appears totally changed – the autumn afternoon has arrived, the long shadows, the clear air, the serene sky –, in a word: Zarathustra has arrived, do you understand??.... It is only with Nietzsche that I can say I have begun a real life.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Chirico's letter to Mr. Fritz Gartz, Florence, undated, c. 5 Jan. 1911; from LETTERS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, GEMMA DE CHIRICO AND ALBERTO DE CHIRICO TO FRITZ GARTZ, MILAN-FLORENCE, 1908-1911 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/559-567Metafisica7_8.pdf, p. 564 1908 - 1920

Life, Stupidity, World, Feeling

“We constantly use the word "simplify", but its meaning depends on what you are going to do next, and there is no uniform definition.”

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

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Dependency

“Let us… take the most concrete example of state capitalism… It is Germany. Here we have the 'last word' in modern, large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organization, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics and [substitute] a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Left Wing' Childishness", Pravda (May 1918).
1910s

“Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow….
In this world – as I have known it – we are made to suffer without the shadow of a reason, of a cause or of guilt….
There is no morality, no knowledge and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that… is always but a vain and fleeting appearance….
A moment, a twinkling of an eye and nothing remains – but a clod of mud, of cold mud, of dead mud cast into black space, rolling around an extinguished sun. Nothing. Neither thought, nor sound, nor soul. Nothing.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, quoted in Joseph Conrad: A Biography (1991) by Jeffrey Meyers, p. 166

World, Faith, Hope, Soul

“The words of our childhood became strangers to us- we couldn't use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P.6

Life, Way, Childhood

“It is essential to bear in mind that the world of the mystics, like that of modern physics, cannot always be 'explained' in normal words, but often 'shows' itself the better through visual images.. [from the accumulation of matter and of objects to the radicalism of a gesture, it is a matter of] painting the essential and nothing more”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Tàpies is citing here Llull
in his 1990 speech 'L'art modern, la mística i l'humor' ('Modern Art, Mysticism and Humour'), Barcelona: Editorial Empúries i Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1993; as quoted in: 'Tàpies: From Within', June ─ November, 2013 - Presse Release, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), p. 12
insisting on his 'magma works' like 'Montseny-Montnegre' and 'Díptic amb dues formes corbes' (Diptych with Two Curved Shapes), 1988.
1981 - 1990

World, Painting

“The Western societies have had hundreds of years of reformation behind them. Islam has never had its reformation, and that is part of the problem. If you look back to the 16th and 17th centuries when men were killing one another in the name of religion throughout Europe, that's where we're at more or less, historically speaking, in terms of the level of debate and discourse. The Quran is considered an untouchable text, not a historical document. … This is the literal word of God, and it is very dangerous to play with that in the Middle East today.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Men, God, Religion, Problem

“He whom we anatomized
‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers
and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things’
speaks
to us, hatching marrow,
broody all night over the bones of a deadman.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

from "Villon" (1930)

Flowers, Night

“We’re sick and tired of these stories. The reason they keep using the word ‘cannibal’ about us is because they think we’re savages. It’s like calling Germans today Nazis because of their past, or Britain a land where witches are burned at the stake, of child slavery and public executions. It’s just lazy, racist journalism.”

Benny Wenda (1975) West Papuan activist

Survival and tribal people denounce ‘ludicrous’ cannibal claims http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/7807

Thinking, Past

“In my conversation, I shall talk and act as I please. Still I am always aware, when speaking in public, that there are those present who are disposed to find fault with this people, and to try to raise a prejudice against them; and they will pick up isolated words and sentences, and put them together to suit themselves, and send forth a garbled version to prejudice the world against us. Such a course I never care anything about; for I have frequently said, spoken words are but wind, and when they are spoken are gone; consequently I take liberties in speaking which I do not allow when I commit my sentiments to writing.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 2:179 (February 18, 1855)
Young predicts that people will take his written words and rearrange them to suit themselves.
1850s

People, World

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt. […]
This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane's article. […] It is breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that the degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see further than you do.
Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.
"A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946), published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
Some of these ideas were included in the essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949) (see below).

Life, Men, People, Truth

“I can see this, I suppose you could call it, aura of colors that words can't describe around living things. And when something dies the aura fades leaving something that's not easy to look at. It appears empty in a way that makes you feel empty too!”

Mark Waid Superman: Birthright

Clark Kent, to his mother, Martha Kent, in an email
Superman: Birthright (2003–2004)

Color, Way, Feeling, Appearance

Quotes about wording page 54

Quotes about wording
page 54