Quotes about wording
page 56

“Purify yourself by a well-ordered and useful life. Watch over your thoughts, feelings, words and actions. This will clear your vision.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Purification
Source: "I am That." P.27.

Life, Feeling

“What we may do
To-morrow may perhaps decide our fate.
We may have said but yesterday some word
Which may not be recalled.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Corinne’s Chant in the Vicinity of Naples
Translations, From the French

Fate

“About 1883 a kind of break occurred in my work. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and had come to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, I was at an impasse”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Benicka (1980) commented:
The frescoes of Raphael and the Pompeian murals that he saw there definitely confirmed what Renoir had begun to feel about his own art; that it was becoming too amorphous in character and was weak in design.
undated quotes
Source: ‎'‎'Renoir‎'‎', by A. Vollard, Paris, 1920, p. 135; as quoted in: Corinne Benicka (1980) Great modern masters. p. 130;

Drawing, Painting

“I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character — not wealth or power or position — is of supreme worth.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) American financier and philanthropist

I Believe

Wealth

“This film is extremely visual. It is difficult to describe in words without running the risk of losing or boring the reader.
I have come up with a simplified summary, therefore, like a readers guide, which will conjure up the images in as few words as possible :
— the beginning is Leon: The Professional
— the middle is Inception
— the end is 2001: A Space Odyssey
Don't interpret this as pretension on my part, merely a visual, emotional and philosophical point of reference.”

Luc Besson (1959) French film director, writer, and producer

"NOTA", for his film Lucy, as quoted in "Luc Besson's Statement Of Intent For 'Lucy' Compares The Film To '2001,' 'Inception' & 'Leon The Professional'" by Kevin Jagernauth, in Indiewire (28 July 2014) http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/luc-bessons-statement-of-intent-for-lucy-compares-the-film-to-2001-inception-leon-the-professional-20140728

Parting

“Jack: You'll have to compromise, smile, concern yourself with your public image, measure your words as carefully as possible… and turn yourself into a dutiful party hack! [chuckles] Never mind, Nigel, never mind.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Jack Hay was based on Ron Brewer, who had been Potter's agent when he was Labour candidate for East Hertfordshire in the 1964 general election.
Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton (1965)

Smile

“For centuries we have labored under the illusion that Western Christianity was something that could be exported, and only recent events have at last made it obvious to us how vain and futile have been the labors and zeal of devoted missionaries for five centuries. When Cortez and his small but valiant band of iron men conquered the empire of the Aztecs, he was immediately followed by a train of earnest and devoted missionaries, chiefly Franciscans, who began to preach the Christian gospel to the natives. And they soon sent back home, with innocent enthusiasm, glowing accounts of the conversions they had effected. You can feel their sincerity, their piety, their ardor, and their joy in the pages of Father Sagun, Father Torquemada, and many others. And for their sake I am glad that the poor Franciscans never suspected how small a part they had really played in the religious conversions that gave them such joy. Far more effective than their words and their book had been the Spanish cannon that had breached the Aztec defenses and the ruthless Spanish soldiers who had slain the Aztec priests at their altars and toppled the Aztec idols from the sacrificial pyramids. The Aztecs accepted Christianity as a cult, not because their hearts were touched by doctrines of love and mercy, but because Christianity was the religion of the White men whose bronze cannon and mail-clad warriors made them invincible.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1960s

Love, Men, Books, Religion

“The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation… claims… the "Whole substance" of the wine is converted into the blood of Christ,; the appearance of wine that remains is "merely accidental", "inhering in no substance". Transubstantiation is colloquially taught as meaning that the wine "literally" turns into the blood of Christ. Whether in its obfuscatory Aristotelian or its franker colloquial form, the claim of transubstantiation can be made only if we do serious violence to the normal meanings of words like 'substance' and 'literally'.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Viruses of the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Appearance, Wine, Christ

“I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state "I hurt" or "I hate" or "I want." Or, indeed, "Look at me." And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.”

Anita Brookner (1928–2016) British novelist and art historian.

Look At Me (1983)

Love, Hate, World, Business

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind,—this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for. The more we think of it, the more attractive and desirable it becomes. To do some work that is needed, and to do it thoroughly well; to make our toil count for something in adding to the sum total of what is actually profitable for humanity; to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or, better still, to make one wholesome idea take root in a mind that was bare and fallow; to make our example count for something on the side of honesty and cheerfulness, and courage, and good faith, and love - this is an aim for life which is very wide, and yet very definite, as clear as light. It is not in the least vague. It is only free; it has the power to embody itself in a thousand forms without changing its character. Those who seek it know what it means, however it may be expressed. It is real and genuine and satisfying. There is nothing beyond it, because there can be no higher practical result of effort. It is the translation, through many languages, of the true, divine purpose of all the work and labor that is done beneath the sun, into one final, universal word. It is the active consciousness of personal harmony with the will of God who worketh hitherto.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: Ships and Havens https://archive.org/stream/shipshavens00vand#page/28/mode/2up/search/more+we+think+of+it (1897), p.27

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“The problem with alchemy wasn’t that the alchemists had failed to turn lead into gold—no one could do that. The problem, rather, was that the alchemists had failed uninformatively. As a group, the alchemists were notably reclusive; they typically worked alone, they were secretive about their methods and their results, and they rarely accompanied claims of insight or success with anything that we’d recognize today as documentation, let alone evidence. Alchemical methods were hoarded rather than shared, passed down from master to apprentice, and when the alchemists did describe their experiments, the descriptions were both incomplete and vague. As Boyle himself complained of the alchemists’ publications, “Hermetic Books have such involved Obscuritys that they may justly be compared to Riddles written in Cyphers. For after a Man has surmounted the difficulty of decyphering the Words & Terms, he finds a new & greater difficulty to discover the meaning of the seemingly plain Expression.””

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Secret, Books, Problem, Success

“There is a limit to the number of (and I'm going to use this word in an entirely neutral sense) aliens who can be brought into a nation, particularly as close-knit and concentrated a nation as Britain is, without breaking the bounds of that society and setting up intolerable frictions and stresses as damaging to one side as to the other. Now, this is a question of number. But the relationship between number and difference is clearly important, because the more different they are – and colour is a signal, an outward signal of differences (not significant in itself, but it signalizes other differences that one can't deny) – the greater the difference, the smaller the numbers that can at any one time be accepted without breaking, or being thought to break (which comes to the same thing if we're talking about psychology), the framework of a nation and a society. So it's numbers.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: The Trouble with Enoch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN6sTBSAp-A&feature=youtu.be&t=12m8s (recorded 19 May 1969) 1960s

Question, Sense, Time

“When your heart has been broken,
Hard words have been spoken.
It ain't easy - but it's only love.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

It's Only Love, performed with Tina Turner
Song lyrics, Reckless (1984)

Love, Heart

“It speaks to me in the silence of this one
then through the words of that one speaking;
it whispers to me through an eyebrow raised
and the message of an eye winking.”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes (1982)

Silence

“(Speaking about Chris Ryan, ex-SAS) Charming! Sat there in his white jeans and wanted me to fail. I don't know what he had against me. I'm sure it was nothing to do with my over use of the word ‘podia’, which I hoped would irritate him a little bit more than it did. Some people…”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, E4 Mind Control Night

People, Hope

“But we're different from hawks and wolves, Ville. We can actually figure out the consequences of what we do, and that makes us… oh, I don't know the word…'
'Culpable?' Rint suggested.
'Yes, that's the word all right.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

“From the beginning of the year to the end, day and night, morning and evening, in action and repose, in speech and in silence, the warrior must keep death constantly before him and have ever in mind that the one death [which he has to give] should not be suffered in vain. In other words [he must have perfect control over his own death] just as if he were holding an intemperate steed in rein. Only he who truly keeps death in mind this way can understand what is meant by [Yamaga Soko's maxim of] "preparedness."”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. IV.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

Death, Way, Understanding, Silence

“You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own — for he cannot conceive of any other except himself — and plumes himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision

God, Understanding, Teachers

“It's not the first time I've noticed how much more power words have than ideas, particularly in France.”

George Sand Indiana

Ce n'est pas la première fois que je remarque combien, en France particulièrement, les mots ont plus d’empire que les idées.
Indiana, pt. 1, ch. 2 (1832); Sylvia Raphael (trans.) Indiana (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 23

Idea, Time

“It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

Letter to Alexander Pope; compare: "Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God", Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 331.

God, Truth, Nature

“I believe the art of the future including poetry will be simple, fresh and strongly coloured and will be understood and loved by the ignorant as well as the most cultivated. A popular art in the finest sense of the word.”

Max Michelson (1880–1953) American poet

Love, Art, Sense, Future

“Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 209
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

Love, Memory

“What is imagination? Psychologists tell us that it is the plastic or creative power of the soul; but materialists confound it with fancy. The radical difference between the two, was however, so thoroughly indicated by Wordsworth, in the preface to his Lyrical Ballads, that it is no longer excusable to interchange the words. Imagination, Pythagoras maintained to be the remembrance of precedent spiritual, mental, and physical states, while fancy is the disorderly production of the material brain.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XI

Soul, Imagination

“The predecessors of Newton and Leibnitz knew perfectly well how to determine tangents and areas, but they had to approach each problem from first principles. The great contribution of Newton and Leibnitz was precisely to make the procedures for finding tangents, areas, etc. into a calculus, that is, a systematic way of calculating—a collection of algorithms, to use the currently fashionable word.”

Ralph P. Boas Jr. (1912–1992) American mathematician

[Calculus as an Experimental Science, 78, 6, 1971, 664–667, The American Mathematical Monthly, 10.2307/2316582]

Way, Fashion, Problem

“I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 26, pp. 474-475

God, People, Help

“You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they’ll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don’t change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 2.

People, Change, Hurt

“The Supreme Power is not a Mind; not a Force; not a Being, but something higher than a Being; something for which we have no words, something for which we have no ideas.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect"

Idea

“When friends speak overmuch of times gone by, often it's because they sense their present time is turning them from friends to strangers. Long before the moment came to say goodbye, I think, we said goodbye in other words and ways and silences. Then when the moment came for it at last, we didn't say it as should be said by friends. So now at last, dear Mouse, with many, many years between: goodbye.”

Frederick Buechner book Godric

Godric (1980)

Way, Thinking, Sense, Silence

“The communist peasant-nationalist regimes of Asia, relying on the Führerprinzip, extreme ethnocentric nationalism, and racism (and the ultimately grotesque in antimodernism in the case of the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge) seem to some to represent the fascistization of communism. There is no doubt that, as discussed earlier, fascism and communism share many fundamental characteristics, and Russian spokesmen delight in applying the same words to China as to Nazi Germany: ‘petit bourgeois’ policy, ‘bourgeois nationalism,’ ‘military-bureaucratic degeneration,’ ‘subservient obedience’ of the masses, ‘anti-intellectualism,’ ‘voluntarism,’ ‘subjectivism,’ ‘autarchic’ policies that try to place ‘surplus population’ on ‘foreign territories,’ concluding that ‘the Maoist approach in no way differs from fascism.”

Stanley G. Payne (1934) American historian

Source: Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980), p. 208-209

Way, Communication

“Truth has noble effects. Truth is the seed of the new birth. God does not regenerate us by miracles or revelations, but by the word of truth (James 1:18). As truth is the breeder of grace, so it is the feeder of it (1Ti 4:6). Truth sanctifies: "Sanctify them through Thy truth"”

Thomas Watson (1616–1686) English nonconformist preacher and author

John 17:17
Heaven Taken By Storm

God, Truth, Birth

““When you get back to Taglios now, Master, you can establish a mighty reputation by explaining the myths in the words of a being who lived through their creation.”
Santaraksita smiled sourly, “You know better, Dorabee. Mythology is one area where nobody wants to know the absolute truth because time has forged great symbols from raw materials supplied by ancient events. Prosaic distortions of fact metamorphose into perceived truths of the soul.”
He had a point. In religion, precise truth has almost no currency. True believers will kill and destroy to defend their inaccurate beliefs.
And that is a truth upon which you can rely.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 97 (pp. 351-352)

Truth, Religion, Smile, Soul

“And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinsel windowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you've got to do one of two things… Please mister where's the door to the building? Round the block? Just round the block… one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what's the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There's nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), pp. 365-366

Life, Faith, Dreams, Time

“The bureaucratic, though capitalistic, spirit of our governments tends towards a state socialism which, in fact, is only state capitalism, but which is dazzling and misleading for those who are easily deceived by external similarities and catch words. The German, or more accurately the Prussian, state socialism whose ideal is a military, landlord and police state, hates democracy above everything else. … It is to them something inherently political. But all politics is diametrically opposed to what is socialist. So by this trick logic we arrive at the conclusion which has gained footing here and there, even in social democratic circles, that democracy as savoring of politics has nothing in common with socialism, but on the contrary is opposed to it. … But the truth is that democracy is not a thing that is specifically political, and we must never forget that we are not merely a socialist party, but a social democratic party because we have perceived that socialism and democracy are inseparable.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Hate, Truth, Democracy, Forgetting

“Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 10.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

Love, Life, Death, War

“I asked a thief to steal me a peach:
He turned up his eyes.
I asked a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek, she cries.

As soon as I went
An angel came.
He winked at the thief
And smiled at the dame—

And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree,
And still as a maid
Enjoyed the lady.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

I Asked a Thief
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Lie, Smile, Angels, Tree

“We are stripped of authority and reduced and devaluated and silenced. Silenced here means that the purposes of the First Amendment, premised upon conditions presumed and promoted by protecting free speech, do not pertain to women because they are not our conditions. Consider them: individual self-fulfillment – how does pornography promote our individual self-fulfillment? How does sexual inequality even permit it? Even if she can form words, who listens to a woman with a penis in her mouth?”

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

"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 193
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

Women, Silence

“Xylophone is spelled with an X, that's wrong, xylophone's zzzz, X? I don't fuckin' see it. It should be a Z up front, next time you have to spell xylophone, use a Z. When someone says "Hey that's wrong." say "No it ain't. If you think that's wrong, you need to get your head Z-rayed." It's like X wasn't given enough to do, so they had to promise it more. Okay, you don't start a lot of words, but we'll give you a co-starring role in tic-tac-toe. And you will be associated with hugs and kisses. And you will mark the spot. And you will make writing Christmas easier. And incidentally, you will start xylophone. Are you happy, you fuckin' X?!”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Mitch All Together (2003)

Happiness, Star, Kiss, Thinking

“Early in my public labors I was bidden by the Lord, "Write, write the things that are revealed to you." At the time this message came to me, I could not hold my hand steady. My physical condition made it impossible for me to write. But again came the word, "Write the things that are revealed to you." I obeyed; and as the result it was not long before I could write page after page with comparative ease. Who told me what to write? Who steadied my right hand, and made it possible for me to use a pen?”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

It was the Lord.
The Review and Herald (14 June 1906), p. 8

Time

“You must not believe me. You must realize it in yourself know it, for it is beyond words and thinking. And it has to be experienced without recourse to drugs or insanity.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Thinking

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Tear

“True there has been more talk of peace since 1945 than, I should think, at any other time in history. At least we hear more and read more about it because man's words, for good or ill, can now so easily reach the millions.
Very often the words are good and even inspiring, the embodiment of our hopes and our prayers for peace. But while we all pray for peace, we do not always, as free citizens, support the policies that make for peace or reject those which do not. We want our own kind of peace, brought about in our own way.
The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction. The life of states cannot, any more than the life of individuals, be conditioned by the force and the will of a unit, however powerful, but by the consensus of a group, which must one day include all states. Today the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

The Four Faces of Peace (1957)

Life, Peace, Hope, Way

“Makambas (old slave word for Dutch people) should return to the Netherlands in body bags.”

Helmin Wiels (1958–2013) Curaçao politician

Curacao Chronicle http://www.curacaochronicle.com/judicial/p-v-v-press-charges-against-wiels/

People

“What a teacher imparts by word of mouth is nothing in comparison with what he teaches us to get for ourselves from books.”

Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) French writer

Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 43

Books, Teachers

“Trump is an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs and crazy conspiracy theories. He champions protectionism and isolationism — the policies that brought us the Great Depression and World War II. He wants to undertake a police-state roundup of undocumented immigrants and to bar Muslims from coming to this country. He encourages his followers to assault protesters and threatens to sue or smear critics. He would abandon Japan and South Korea and break up the most successful alliance in history — NATO. But he has kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin. There has never been a major party nominee in U. S. history as unqualified for the presidency. The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

The Republican Party is dead, May 8, 2016, latimes.com, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-boot-republicans-in-exile-20160508-story.html,

War, World, History, Success

“Secularism, with its moral relativism, is in direct opposition to Christianity and its absolute morality. The battle is between these two worldviews—one that stands on God's Word and one that accepts man's opinions.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Carol Derby & Ken Ham, "The 'Evolutionizing' of a Culture", War of the World Views: Powerful Answers For An "Evolutionized" Culture (2006), p. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=RTc_lsnp0r0C&pg=PA11

God

“It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word “intuition.””

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 18 “Collision” section 4, p. 377

“Take the time to make some sense / Of what you want to say / And cast your words away upon the waves
Dance if you wanna dance, please brother take a chance / You know we're gonna go which way we wanna go / All we know is that we don't know how it's gonna be, please brother let it be / Life, on the other hand, won't make you understand / We're all part of the masterplan.
I'm not saying right is wrong / It's up to us to make the best of all the things that come our way”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

The Masterplan, released 30 October 1995
B-sides released by Oasis

Life, Way, Understanding, Sense

“Fellow citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak at length and critically of this great and good man, and of his high mission in the world. That ground has been fully occupied and completely covered both here and elsewhere. The whole field of fact and fancy has been gleaned and garnered. Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of any other man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. Even those who only knew him through his public utterance obtained a tolerably clear idea of his character and personality. The image of the man went out with his words, and those who read them knew him.”

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

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

People, Age, World, Feeling

“Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 209

Death, Stupidity, Personality

“When you’re only doing it for one play and you’re just not where you’re supposed to be, and freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, boy are you going to clean somebody’s clock for that one play.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

Boy, Freedom

“It was all completely incomprehensible to me. I was fearful of the language. You had to look up every third word.”

Kevin Kline (1947) American actor

On his initial reaction, as a student, to the works of Shakespeare, The Washington University Record http://record.wustl.edu/archive/1996/01-25-96/1834.html (25 January 1996)

Fear

“By "regime values," I intend to suggest that the normative foundation of ethical standards for public servants in any regime is the values of that regime. In the United States these regime values happen to be constitutional values, but not every regime takes its constitution as seriously as Americans do… By using the word "regime," my intention was to stress the particularistic character of the values that form the basis of public administration ethics. By emphasizing regime rather than constitution, I hope to make this book more interesting to students from other countries who are studying public administration in the United States.”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

(1989, p. ix-x); as cited in: Patrick Overeem, "The Concept of Regime Values Are Revitalization and Regime Change Possible?." The American Review of Public Administration 45.1 (2015): 46-60.
Ethics for bureaucrats, 1988

Books, Hope, Study, Country

“If the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time http://books.google.com/books?id=0S9TgXJ-aD0C&q=%22If+the+word+integration+means+anything+this+is+what+it+means+that+we+with+love+shall+force+our+brothers+to+see+themselves+as+they+are+to+cease+fleeing+from+reality+and+begin%22&pg=PA21#v=onepage (1963)

Love, Reality, Change

“I was walking down by the river. I lay down under a tree. I was broke. I felt pretty low. Then I looked up at the sky—all blue except for one little, white, fleecy cloud. The words came to me for the song—quicker than it's taking me to tell it to you. I got up—and I had new hope. That was the turning point in my life.”

Johnnie Ray (1927–1990) American singer, actor, songwriter and composer

On writing "The Little White Cloud That Cried", The Chicago Tribune (16 March 1952)

Life, Hope, Tree

“And for tired eyes every light is too bright, and for tired lips every breath too heavy, and for tired ears every word too much.”

Georg Büchner Leonce and Lena

Und müden Augen jedes Licht zu scharf, und müden Lippen jeder Hauch zu schwer, Lächelnd. und müden Ohren jedes Wort zu viel.
Act II.
Leonce and Lena (1838)

Light

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2004

Death, War, People, World

“Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

National Airs, Oft in the Stilly Night http://www.james-joyce-music.com/song04_lyrics.html, st. 1 (1815).

Love, Smile, Tear, Light

“He has a deep contempt for Britain, the British people and parliamentary democracy. He is trying to climb back to power via the Treaty of Rome, and put Britain under government from Brussels for ever. In 1970 Mr Heath solemnly promised that he would not take Britain into the Common Market without the full-hearted consent of the British people. He broke his pledged word then, and he now says he will not accept a 'No' vote on Thursday. Heath promised more jobs and higher living standards inside the EEC. These promises were all broken, and he now tells us we are so poor we cannot come out; beggars can't be choosers. That is false, too. Heath's leadership has been a total disaster for the British people. The Tory Party threw him out.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech at an anti-EEC rally (3 June 1975), quoted in 'Heath attack by Mr Benn', The Times (4 June 1975), p. 6
1970s

People, Democracy, Heart, Falseness

“About staying in the south, even if it's more expensive — Look, we love Japanese painting, we've experienced its influence — all the Impressionists have that in common — and we wouldn't go to Japan, in other words, to what is the equivalent of Japan, the south? So I believe that the future of the new art still lies in the south after all. But it's bad policy to live there alone when two or three could help each other to live on little.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum Vincent was busy, trying to convince a. o. Paul Gauguin to come to Arles, and to settle there 1880s, 1888

Love, Art, Future, Help

“Before the wonderful, terrible wrestling with words and music there is the state of mind I'm calling 'poetic attention' … a sort of readiness … a form of knowing.”

Don McKay (1942) Canadian poet

Baler Twine

Music

“I wrote it [Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure] to prove that one could write so freely about a woman of the town without resorting to the the coarseness the School of Venus [L'Ecole des Filles], which had quite plain words. My printer and publisher certainly were deceived by my avoiding those rank words in the work, which are all that they judge obscenity by.”

John Cleland (1709–1789) British writer

As recounted to James Boswell. 13 April, 1779, in Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck.

Pleasure, School

“Bukharin, like Lenin, regarded the system of basing economic life on mass terror not as a transient necessity but as a permanent principle of socialist organization. He did not shrink from justifying all means of coercion and held, like Trotsky at the same period, that the new system called essentially for the militarization of labour – i. e. the use of police and military force to compel the whole population to work in such places and conditions as the state might arbitrarily decree. Indeed, once the market is abolished there is no longer any free sale of labour or competition between workers, and police coercion is therefore the only means of allocating "human resources". If hired labour is eliminated, only compulsory labour remains. In other words, socialism – as conceived by both Trotsky and Bukharin at this time – is a permanent, nation-wide labour camp.”

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

pg. 28-9
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Life, Time

“The European Union is happy to suck money from member states like a giant leech, with absolutely no respect for how it is spent. Whenever more transparency is called for, they simply hide behind smoke and mirrors and fancy words, and completely ignore common sense. They show a total lack of respect to the citizens of the European Union. The problem with the EU is that it spends money like it is going out of fashion, when actually it’s the Euro which is going out of fashion right now, with so many countries now questioning its membership.”

Jill Seymour (1958) British politician

Where is the transparency? More EU smoke and mirrors… http://jillseymourukip.org/where-is-the-transparency-more-eu-smoke-and-mirrors/ (February 28, 2017)

Money, Happiness, Fashion, Question

“People, even poor people, were in general more contented before the 1914-18 war than they are now, although not nearly so well provided with comforts and luxuries. Incidentally they were also more often people of strong individuality, "characters" or "personalities" as we might say; not of course always either virtuous or agreeable, but qualitatively distinctive, not mere drops in an ocean of mediocrity. And they were more content with their lot than we are. What then is the true criterion of contentment? Can it be anything but the acceptance of one's lot, whatever it may be? Or in other words, knowing one's place and fulfilling faithfully whatever function may be associated with it, with a pride in the quality of the product as the principal incentive rather than any tangible reward; knowing, perhaps, that not to want is better than to have; and above all being intelligent enough not to place one's best hopes in nothing but the satisfactions which a short sojourn in this world can bring. All these things are criteria of contentment, and at the same time they are universal ethical constituents of every religion and tradition.”

Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1896–1982) British rower, agriculturalist and translater

Intellectual Freedom (1971)

War, People, World, Religion

“The theory of independence is as old as man himself, and it was not invented in this hall. But it was in this hall that the theory became a practice; that the word went out to all, in Thomas Jefferson's phrase, that "the God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." And today this Nation — conceived in revolution, nurtured in liberty, maturing in independence — has no intention of abdicating its leadership in that worldwide movement for independence to any nation or society committed to systematic human oppression.”

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

1962, Address at Independence Hall

Life, God, Time

“The word model is used as a noun, adjective, and verb, and in each instance it has a slightly different connotation. As a noun "model" is a representation in the sense in which an architect constructs a small-scale model of a building or a physicist a large-scale model of an atom. As an adjective "model" implies a degree or perfection or idealization, as in reference to a model home, a model student, or a model husband. As a verb "to model" means to demonstrate, to reveal, to show what a thing is like.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Scientific method: optimizing applied research decisions, 1962, p. 108 as cited in: Charles West Churchman, Richard O. Mason (1976) World modeling: a dialogue. p. 23.

Home, Sense, Perfection

“In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle. Jack, the guy who said he'd give his right arm for a friend and did when he stopped a bastard of a Jap from slitting me in two. He caught the bayonet in the biceps and they amputated his arm.”

Mickey Spillane book I, the Jury

I, the Jury (1947)

Guy, Lying, Dead

“In this day and age, I consider Genesis, out of all the other books of the Bible, to be the most attacked, scoffed at, and ridiculed—from within parts of the church and outside. You see, because of the indoctrination in the belief evolution and millions of years through the education system and media, many people believe that Genesis 1-11 cannot be taken as literal history. As a result, such evolutionary teaching is a stumbling block to many non-Christians even listening to the gospel from the Word of God—and many people in the church are put on a slippery slide of unbelief in the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"The Erosion of God's Word: It's Catastrophic!" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/06/17/the-erosion-of-gods-word-its-catastrophic/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 17, 2014) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

God, People, Books, Age

“Words are powerless to tell. —
Such the image in my heart, —
Painter, try thy glorious art!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(16th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme III: Outline for a Portrait
23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV: Arion see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Art, Heart

“Ah! How many Judases have we in these days, that kiss Christ, and yet betray Christ; that in their words profess him, but in their works deny him; that bow their knee to him, and yet in their hearts despise him; that call him Jesus, and yet will not obey him for their Lord”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

from: A Word To The Reader
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Kiss, Heart, Christ

“Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Make our pleasant earth below
Like the heaven above.”

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney Little Things

"Little Things" (1845) as quoted in Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson. These were the final words of the poem in the original publication, but later versions published anonymously by other authors appended various additions to this. It has also often appeared credited to Carney in a variant form:
Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Help to make earth happy
Like the heaven above.

Love

“If we would taste God, and feel in ourselves Eternal Life above all things, We must go forth into God with a faith that is far above our reason, And there dwell, simple, idle, without image, Lifted up by love into the Unwalled Bareness of our intelligence. For when we go out from ourselves in love, and die to all observances in ignorance and darkness, Then we are made complete, And transfigured by the Eternal Word, Image of the Father. And in this emptiness of spirit we receive the Incomprehensible Light, Which enfolds and penetrates us as air is penetrated by the light of the sun; And this Light is nought else but a fathomless gazing and seeing. What we are, that we gaze at; and what we gaze at, that we are. For our thought, our life, our being, are lifted up in simplicity, And united with the Truth, that is God. Therefore in this simple gazing we are one life and one spirit with God
—And this I call the seeing life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Sparkling Stone (c. 1340)

Love, Life, God, Truth

“Burglars! Good gracious!' cried the little woman, springing from the bed in one bound. The word 'burglar' was a terrible one to her, as it is indeed, to every well-constituted woman. 'Robbery' does not sound nearly so awe-inspiring.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

"The Loveridge Burglary" (1900)
Short stories

Spring

“Is the Minister aware that many people regard the present system of juryless trials at the Crumlin road court as outrageous? It would be appropriate for him to pay a visit to see the way in which trials take place, with no jury, where the decision is made solely on the word of a supergrass witness who stands to benefit from giving evidence, and where only the judge makes the decision. How much money has been paid in the last four years to supergrass witnesses for their evidence in such circumstances?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/jun/13/crumlin-road-court-trial in the House of Commons (13 June 1985). 1980s

Money, People, Way, Decision

“It was a common saying of Myson that men ought not to investigate things from words, but words from things; for that things are not made for the sake of words, but words for things.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Myson, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Men

“The thing that has always disturbed me about O_DIRECT is that the whole interface is just stupid, and was probably designed by a deranged monkey on some serious mind-controlling substances. [*]

[*] In other words, it's an Oracleism.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Notes: from NOTES topic of open(2) manpage, 2009-04-13 http://linux.die.net/man/2/open, 2000s, 2009

Stupidity

“I never for a moment considered not doing the show. When I did the show I became very emotional. Some of the lyrics suddenly took on an entirely different meaning. Words like, 'as if we never said goodbye' became more real.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

Regarding Paige's battle with cancer; as quoted in "Elaine's close curtain call" by Rebecca Hardy in The Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=301138&in_page_id=1799 (8 May 2004)

“In the words of the old saying, every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”

Robert F. Kennedy book The Pursuit of Justice

The Pursuit of Justice http://books.google.com/books?id=o3mHAAAAMAAJ&q=&quot;Every+society+gets+the+kind+of+criminal+it+deserves+What+is+equally+true+is+that+every+community+gets+the+kind+of+law+enforcement+it+insists+on&quot; pt. 3, "Eradicating Free Enterprise in Organized Crime," (1964) Alexander Lacassange https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Lacassagne Attribution of original quote

Law, Communication

“If we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should become indeed the boonbringer, the culture hero of the day—a personage of not only local but world historical moment. In a word: the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties, eradicate them in his own case (i. e., give battle to the nursery demons of his local culture) and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what C. G. Jung called "the archetypal images." This is the process known to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy as viveka, "discrimination."”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 1

World

“When I was eight years old, I played a story game with my younger brother and sister to help them fall asleep. The 'word-story game' was where they would choose a word and I would create a story. Acting and directing are similar to this game, where I am given the words then I fill in the life of the characters.”

Carson Grant (1950) American actor

Kaminsky, Denise, Sept 2007, "Carson Grant directs Romeo and Juliet", Associated Content.
About his thoughts on directing and acting, from article on Associated Content.

Life, Game, Sister, Help

“But I thought: Of course -- Lyman was representing my own ideas about something else too; the overly gullible people who parade as skeptics. All many of them need is a word they've been some big shot in a past life, or known some famous person, and presto, they're confirmed "believers." People like that -- like the boy on the phone -- never trust their own vision.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 13

Life, People, Boy, Idea

“You're not supposed to say the word "cancer" in a song.
And tellin' folks Jesus is the answer can rub 'em wrong.
It ain't hip to sing about tractors, trucks, little towns, and mama, yeah that might be true.
But this is country music and we do.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

This Is Country Music, written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)

Music, Singing, Country

“Behold, most beloved reader, thus true faith or true knowledge begets love, and love begets obedience to the commandments of God. Therefore Christ Jesus says, "He that believeth on him is not condemned." Again at another place, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death into life," Jn. 5:24. For true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonished and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. The persecution, suffering and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.246

Love, Life, Death, God

“…a clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive. In other words, people came from other countries — I guess you'd call them colonialists — and they pitted one group of people against another.”

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

Press Availability with President Kagame of Rwanda (February 19, 2008) http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/02/20080219-6.html http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/bush-outside-forces-tend-to-divide-people-up 2000s, 2008

People, Learning, Country

“I can't find a word to say to you
I can't comprehend, I can't relate to you

Plain to see your faith for me
Take me higher angel fire
Take me where I want to go
Teach me things I need to know.”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

Angel Fire
Are You Listening? (2007)

Faith, Angels

“When I speak of All That Is, you must understand my position within it. All That Is knows no other. This does not mean that there may not be more to know. It does not mean, and here words quite fail us, it does not mean that All That Is, in any terms we can conceive of, may not be limited. It knows of no other.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 426, Page 25
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 9

Understanding

“The great trouble with all of us who are struggling with unhappy or unfortunate conditions is that we have separated ourselves in some way from the great magnetic center of creation. We are not thinking right, and so we are not attracting the right things. “Think the things you want.” The profoundest philosophy is locked up in these few words. Think of them clearly, persistently, concentrating upon them with all the force and might of your mind, and struggle toward them with all your energy. This is the way to make yourself a magnet for the things you want. But the moment you begin to doubt, to worry, to fear, you demagnetize yourself, and the things you desire flee from you. You drive them away by your mental attitude. They cannot come near you while you are deliberately separating yourself from them. You are going in one direction, and the things you want are going in the opposite direction.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

How to Get What You Want (1917).

Fear, Way, Thinking

“Rationalism… is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg 227.
Against Method (1975)

God

“For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, sailors and gentlemen; and this dying England taught the Americans all they have of speech, or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking birds.”

John Ruskin book Fors Clavigera

Fors Clavigera,, letter xlii, ( 1 June 1874 https://archive.org/stream/forsclavigera02ruskiala#page/204/mode/2up; quoted by William Archer in America To-Day). Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)

Bird, Learning, Dead

“I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and the courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

"Sisterhood" in New York Magazine (20 December 1971), p. 49

Women, History, Courage

“Well, my faith--if there is any, because I am an agnostic--I have faith in good people which I think is all that one can do. The principle I tried to follow is: Try not to lie, because then you tie yourself up in knots; you have to follow it up with other lies. The only religion I subscribe to is the one word--ahimsa--try not to hurt.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

I Don't Know One Editor In India Who Is Well-Read

People, Lie, Faith, Religion

“My dad loved using the word “ain’t.” He said it was the best damn slang word invented by the Americans.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Love

“Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering a short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever anxious to return to the Group.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Learning, Memory, Evil

“In such a world—at such a time---“a decent respect for the opinion of mankind”—in the words of our Declaration of Independence—requires that we state plainly the purposes we seek, the principles we hold.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)

World, Time

“For Alfred seide a wis word,
euch mon hit schulde legge on hord:
"3ef thu isihst er he beo icume,
his strencþe is him wel neh binume."”

Alfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex

On this, hear Alfred's weighty word Which man should treasure once it's heard: "Foresee your trouble in its course: You thereby take away its force."
The Owl and the Nightingale, line 1223; as translated by Brian Stone in The Owl and the Nightingale, Cleanness, St. Erkenwald (1971), p. 224.
Misattributed

“… we are approaching a time when, in Moravec's words, 'almost all humans work to amuse other humans.' In rich countries, that time has already arrived. The old industries have been exported to the developing world. At home, new occupations have evolved, replacing those of the industrial era. Many of them satisfy needs that in the past were repressed or disguised. A thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions and spiritual boutiques has sprung up. Beyond that, there is an enormous grey economy of illegal industries supplying drugs and sex. The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless. Industrialisation created the working class. Now it has made the working class obsolete. Unless it is cut short by ecological collapse, it will eventually do the same to nearly everyone.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: An Irony of History (p. 160)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World, Religion, Sex, Home

“…the following passage from Major Cartwright's Memorandum Book: “On Sunday the 10th of April, 1814, Earl Stanhope informed me that in conversation with Mr. Fox and a third person, Mr. Fox said ‘Parliamentary reform was a fit thing to be made use of in argument in the House of Commons, but not to be carried into execution.’” Lord Stanhope also mentioned the same fact to Major Cartwright's friend, Mr. Holt White, and in the same words.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

F. D. Cartwright (ed.), The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright. Volume I (London: Henry Colburn, 1826), pp. 132-133, n.
Attributed

Books, Housing, Personality

“Rightly did Darwin pin up a paper warning himself to be careful about using such words as "higher" and "lower." What is downward about the trend that has produced elephants, chimpanzees, wolves, dolphins, and jackdaws by comparison with ants and bees?”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 148.

Bee

“What, then, is the Constitution? I will tell you. It is not even like the British Constitution, which is made up of enactments of Parliament, decisions of Courts, and the established usages of the Government. The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people. I am careful to make this statement here; in America it would not be necessary. It would not be necessary here if my assailant had shown the same desire to be set before you the simple truth, which he manifested to make out a good case for himself and friends.”

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

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

People, Truth, Decision

“Our minds fall very readily under the spell of such unmitigated words as Purity and Chastity. Only death beyond decay, absolute non-existence, can be Pure and Chaste. Life is impurity, fact is impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is dependent on parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the world has a tainted ancestor, and not a saint but has evil thoughts…. This stupidity, this unreasonable idealism of the common mind, fills life to-day with cruelties and exclusions, with partial suicides and secret shames. But we are born impure, we die impure; it is a fable that spotless white lilies sprang from any saint's decay, and the chastity of a monk or nun is but introverted impurity. We have to take life valiantly on these conditions and make such honour and beauty and sympathy out of our confusions, gather such constructive experience, as we may…. Life is that, and abstinence is for the most part a mere evasion of life.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

Source: First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4225 (1908), Ch.3, section 20, Of Abstinences and Disciplines

Life, Death, Health, Secret

Quotes about wording page 56

Quotes about wording
page 56