Quotes about work (10000 quotes, page 53)

“Something is beautiful if it is honest. If you do an engaged piece of work, which is sincere, the concept of beauty meets the concept of truth. So no illusive harmony. I try to reach people who strive for truth, for identity. Although these conceptions are incredibly warn out, one must try to find the way back to these simple conceptions.”

Jörg Immendorff (1945–2007) German artist

Heidrun Reshöft & Joachim Pente (Transl.) " Art : Interview; Jörg Immendorff http://bombmagazine.org/article/322/j-rg-immendorff" at BOMB Magazine, (7) Fall 1983.

People , Truth , Beauty , Way

“My dearest little Julie, I love you as I lie dying; I shall still love you when I am dead. I beg of you, do not cry; this parting was inevitable. I would have liked to be with you until you married – Work hard and be good as you have always been; you have never caused me a moment's sorrow in you little life [Julie is 16, then]. You have beauty, good fortune; use them well. I think the best thing would be to live with your cousins in the Rue de Villejust, but I do not wish to force you to do anything. Give a memento of me to you aunt Edma [Berthe's sister], and to your cousins too; and give Monet's [painting] 'Bateaux en reparation' to your cousin Gabriel. Tell M. Degas that if he found a museum he is to choose a Manet [of her Manet paintings]. A keepsake for Monet; one for Renoir, and one of my drawings for Bartolomé. Give something to the two concierges. Do not cry, I love you more than I can tell you.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

Quote of Berthe's last letter to daughter Julie, End of Feb. 1895; as cited in Berthe Morisot, Jean-Dominique Rey; translation in English, Flammarion, S.A. (ISBN: 978-2-08-020345-8), Paris, 2016, p. 217
1881 - 1895

Love , Life , Lie , Beauty

““The practice of employing images as ornaments and memorials to decorate the temple of the Lord is in a most especial manner approved by the Word of God himself. Moses was commanded to place two cherubim upon the ark, and to set up a brazen figure of the fiery serpent, that those of the murmuring Israelites who had been bitten might recover from the poison of their wounds by looking on the image. In the description of Solomon's temple, we read of that prince, not only that he made in the oracle two cherubim of olive tree, of ten 83 Vide supra, p. 17. 101 cubits in height, but that ‘all the walls of the temple round about he carved with divers figures and carvings.’ “In the first book of Paralipomenon (Chronicles) we observe that when David imposed his injunction upon Solomon to realise his intention of building a house to the Lord, he delivered to him a description of the porch and temple, and concluded by thus assuring him: ‘All these things came to me written by the hand of the Lord, that I may understand the works of the pattern.’ “The isolated fact that images were not only directed by the Almighty God to be placed in the Mosaic tabernacle, and in the more sumptuous temple of Jerusalem, but that [132] he himself exhibited the pattern of them, will be alone sufficient to authorise the practice of the Catholic Church in regard to a similar observance.”—(Hierurgia, p. 371.) All this may be briefly answered. There was no representation of the Jewish patriarchs or saints either in the tabernacle or in the temple of Solomon, as is the case with the Christian saints in the Roman Catholic and Græco-Russian Churches; and the brazen serpent, to which the author alludes, was broken into pieces by order of King Hezekiah as soon as the Israelites began to worship it.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), pp. 100-101

God , Books , Understanding , Tree

“Don't despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof.”

Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) American university teacher (1879-1962)

Fischerisms (1944)

Truth

“And so, in calm expectation of a blessed future and a finished work which will explain the past, in honest submission of out way to God, in supreme delight in Him who is the gladness of our joy, the secret of tranquillity will be ours.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 448.

God , Secret , Way , Past

“Publicity, discussion, and agitation are necessary to accomplish any work of lasting benefit.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

Spoken in Evansville, IN (July 7, 1906), As quoted in Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels Who Created Progressive Politics, Michael Wolraich (2014)

“Multitudes, of beautiful works,
Believed, served with us.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Elegy of the Thousand Sons

Beauty

“[You've said your material chooses you. ] That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman—-the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.”

Truman Capote (1924–1984) American author

From a 1968 interview
Truman Capote: Conversations (1987)

Art

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Misattributed to Confucius since at least 1985; correct origins are dubious, as mentioned in "Choose a Job You Love, and You Will Never Have To Work a Day in Your Life" at QuoteInvestigator.com (2 September 2014) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/09/02/job-love/: the oldest English-language use of the proverb has been found in Woolfolk, Ann, "Toshiko Takaezu," Princeton Alumni Weekly, Vol. 83(5), 6 October 1982, p. 32: "Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life." (attributed to Arthur Szathmary, who attributes it, in his turn, to an unnamed source).
Misattributed, Not Chinese

love , Cute , Back To Work , Romantic

“All good work is done in defiance of management.”

Bob Woodward (1943) American journalist

CBS News' 20th-anniversary Watergate documentary (1994)

“My idea was that with an automatic move you could create a world [Newman's comment on his series small mixed media works, 1944].”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

1940 - 1950
Source: Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London 1990, p. 112

World , Idea

“Dicko: There was something missing from that performance. It was the tick tick tick of your mind working. That was the first time we saw you sing without thinking about what you're doing. Now the trick is to follow along on that road. Simple melody sung beautifully - well done.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 7

Thinking , Singing , Time

“I have not seen Thee, yet I tell Thy praise,
Nor known Thee, yet I image forth Thy ways.
For by Thy seers' and servants' mystic speech
Thou didst Thy sov'ran splendour darkly teach,
And from the grandeur of Thy work they drew
The measure of Thy inner greatness, too.
They told of Thee, but not as Thou must be,
Since from Thy work they tried to body Thee.
To countless visions did their pictures run,
Behold through all the visions Thou art one.”

Yehuda he-Hasid (1140–1217) German philosopher

Shir Hakovod, trans. from the Hebrew by Israel Zangwill

Art , Way

“[Madonna] worked so hard that it was really very touching. She’s a perfectionist and there’s never been anyone on the show that wanted to rehearse more than Madonna did. She wanted to rehearse her scenes over and over again.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

“Communism as an ideology had been passionately committed to women's equality and liberation, in every sense including the erotic, in spite of Lenin's own dislike of casual sexual promiscuity. (However, both Krupskaya and Lenin were among the rare revolutionaries who specifically favored the sharing of housework between the sexes)…Yet, with rather rare exceptions…they were not prominent in the first political ranks of their parties, or indeed at all, and in the new communist-governed states they became even less visible. Indeed, women in leading political functions virtually disappeared…When women streamed into a profession opened to them, as in the U. S. S. R., where the medical profession became largely feminized in consequence, it lost status and income. As against Western feminists, most married Soviet women, long used to a lifetime of paid work, dreamed of the luxury of staying at home and doing only one job…whatever the achievements and failures of the socialist world, it did not generate specifically feminist movements, and could indeed hardly have done so, given the virtual impossibility of any political initiatives not sponsored by state and party before the mid-1980s”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

The Age of Extremes (1992)

Women , World , Dreams , Sex

“Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"America First? America Last? America at Last?," Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992)
1990s

War

“If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence.”
Si igitur meliora sunt ea quae natura quam illa quae arte perfecta sunt, nec ars efficit quicquam sine ratione, ne natura quidem rationis expers est habenda. Qui igitur convenit, signum aut tabulam pictam cum aspexeris, scire adhibitam esse artem, cumque procul cursum navigii videris, non dubitare, quin id ratione atque arte moveatur, aut cum solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua contemplere, intellegere declarari horas arte, non casu, mundum autem, qui et has ipsas artes et earum artifices et cuncta conplectatur consilii et rationis esse expertem putare. [88] Quod si in Scythiam aut in Brittanniam sphaeram aliquis tulerit hanc, quam nuper familiaris noster effecit Posidonius, cuius singulae conversiones idem efficiunt in sole et in luna et in quinque stellis errantibus, quod efficitur in caelo singulis diebus et noctibus, quis in illa barbaria dubitet, quin ea sphaera sit perfecta ratione.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 34
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

Art , Feeling , Star , Intelligence

“Bernie Sanders is an aged, dimwitted thief who's never worked a day in his life where he wasn't taking money from people at gunpoint.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

citation needed

Life , Money , People , Age

“I do not by any means want to deny that I and my fellow workers selected news and quotations following a certain tendency. It is the curse of propaganda during war that one works only with black and white. But to my knowledge it is a mistake to believe that in the Propaganda Ministry thousands of little lies were hatched out. If we had lied on a thousand small things, the enemy would have been able to deal with us more easily than was the case.”

Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) German Nazi official

September, 1946, at the Nuremberg Trials, quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 543 by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997

War , Knowledge

“Showbiz is a job. I never take it too seriously. I work hard, but I never pretend it’s life or death. I’m just incredibly lucky.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

Interview with Rebecca Hardy, Daily Mail 'Weekend' magazine, 27th June 2009

Life , Death

“I rather doubt if man really has much to gain by substituting peace for strife, as you and Jesus Christ recommend. Sic notus Ulixes? do you think you can outwit the resourceful malevolence of Nature? God is not mocked, as St. Paul long ago warned the Galatians. When man gets rid of a great trouble he is easier for a while, but not for long: Nature instantly sets to work to weaken his power of sustaining trouble, and very soon seven pounds is as heavy as fourteen pounds used to be. Last Easter Monday a young woman threw herself in the Lea because her dress looked so shabby amongst the holiday crowd: in other times and countries women have been ravished by half-a-dozen dragoons and taken it less to heart. It looks to me as if the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"Letter to Gilbert Murray" (April 23, 1900).

Women , God , Peace , Nature

“a) The definition of history? Every historian would agree, I think, that history is a kind of research or inquiry. What kind of inquiry it is I do not yet ask. The point is that generically it belongs to what we call the sciences: that is, the forms of thought whereby we ask questions and try to answer them. Science in general, it is important to realize, does not consist in collecting what we already know and arranging it in this or that kind of pattern. It consists in fastening upon something we do not know, and trying to discover it. Playing patience with things we already know may be a useful means towards this end, but it is not the end itself. It is at best only the means. It is scientifically valuable only in so far as the new arrangement gives us the answer to a question we have already decided to ask. That is why all science begins from the knowledge of our own ignorance: not our ignorance of everything, but our ignorance of some definite thing-the origin of parliament, the cause of cancer, the chemical composition of the sun, the way to make a pump work without muscular exertion on the part of a man or a horse or some other docile animal. Science is finding things out: and in that sense history is a science.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: The Idea of History (1946), p. 9

Way , History , Question , Knowledge

“A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, Misalliance (1910)

Hell , Holiday

“Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits
Great propositions and their opposites,
See how they work, and let them fight it out,
To point some light on our eternal doubt.
Marat and I both advocated force
But in debate each took a different course.
Both wanted changes, but his views and mine
On using power never could combine.
On the one side, he who thinks our lives
Can be improved by axes and knives,
Or he who, submerged in the imagination,
Seeking a personal annihilation.”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Sade, epilogue
Marat/Sade (1963)

Imagination , Thinking , Light , Change

“One of the crucial problems we have as a party is that we have brought our leadership in from much too narrow a group. Basically Oxbridge graduates, in particular economics graduates, politics graduates, social scientists and lawyers. We need to reconnect to working-class communities, we have to reconnect to ethnic minority communities and bring up real leaders from within the people we represent.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Daily Mail, 30th December 2011 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080445/Oxbridge-Labour-elitist-fails-connect-working-classes-says-Miliband-aide.html#ixzz1icmLbpsx

People , Communication , Problem

“The Army of the Revolution is recruited by the Soldiers of Despair. Therefore, down with any Scheme which gives men Hope. In so far as it succeeds it curtails our recruiting ground and reinforces the ranks of our Enemies. Such opposition is to be counted upon, and to be utilised as the best of all tributes to the value of our work. Those who thus count upon violence and bloodshed are too few to hinder, and their opposition will merely add to the momentum with which I hope and believe this Scheme will ultimately be enabled to surmount all dissent, and achieve, with the blessing of God, that measure of success with which I verily believe it to be charged.”

William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher

In Darkest England : And The Way Out (1890), p. 81

Men , God , Hope , Success

“I'm a spy… I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Said Jokingly.
2000s, Larry King Live (2000)

Business

“The kind of job doesn't matter. The length of time on the job doesn't matter… If you work hard and do your best, you'll be recognized and move onward.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 88

Time

“Maybe if I point to my brain it will work.”

Chris Cheney (1975) Australian rock musician

http://www.thelivingend.info/band/chris-cheney.php

“The most powerful urge known to Man is the urge to be free of manual labour. Any means that accomplishes that end is fine. Some people erroneously imagine that they have a birthright to non-manual work.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

60
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

People , Imagination

“While an artist is labouring at his work of art, nothing prevents it from surpassing Dream. As soon as it is finished, the work must be hidden or destroyed, or better still, thrown as a prey to the brutal crowd which will magnify it by killing it with its scorn, and thereby intensify its absurd uselessness. We thus condemn art as finished work, we conceive of it only in its movement, in the state of effort and draft. Art is simply a possibility for absolute conquest. For the artist, to complete is to die.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Quote of marinetti in his 'Le Premier Manifeste du Futurisme', 1909
1900's

Dreams , Art , Effort

“So what’s happened since ’92, it’s where the administrations that changed quite dramatically, the foreign policy, and it was working more like pendulum, swinging from one side to the other. Clinton did very little, W did too much, Obama has been doing nothing. It sent a message – sent numerous messages across the world. While people knew in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that America was there, America was consistent. Even if you have a change in the Oval Office, one party replaces another, you could rely on the United States. America was behind American allies. Today? It’s probably, it’s a springtime to be an American enemy because this administration gives up everything to the enemies and betrays allies. And going back to George W. administration, it’s very popular to criticize Bush today, Bush 43. Especially for the Iraq invasion, and I’ve heard many voices, even within the Republican Party, it’s just floating with the popular trend. First of all, I have to say as somebody who was born and raised in a Communist country, I cannot criticize any action that led to the destruction of dictatorship. I think his people had wrong expectations. When they saw the collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship after American invasion of Iraq and then the collapse of a few other dictatorships during the Arab Spring, they had expectations that next day, it would be a democracy. It’s wrong. It was very naive because dictators succeeds the staying in power for so many years, not because he’s a nice guy, just helps his people to get out of poverty, but because he’s brutal, he’s cruel. He succeeds in destroying opposition, first political opposition and then freedom of press and remaining horizontal ties in the society. All the NGOs, anything that could represent not just a threat to him, but it’s any sort of the slightest dissent. It’s kind of a political desert. What do you expect in a desert after 10, 20, 30 – in the case of Gaddafi, 42 years of dictatorship?”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

People , World , Guy , Democracy

“I was appalled to find that the mathematical notation on which I had been raised failed to fill the needs of the courses I was assigned, and I began work on extensions to notation that might serve. In particular, I adopted the matrix algebra used in my thesis work, the systematic use of matrices and higher-dimensional arrays (almost) learned in a course in Tensor Analysis rashly taken in my third year at Queen’s, and (eventually) the notion of Operators in the sense introduced by Heaviside in his treatment of Maxwell’s equations.”

Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004) Canadian computer scientist

"Kenneth E. Iverson" http://keiapl.info/rhui/autobio.htm, autobiographical sketch from an unfinished work (ca. 2004), on his experience at Harvard with "a Masters program in Automatic Data Processing in 1955; in effect, the first computer science program."

Mathematics , Sense , Learning

“Immediately and definitively [after starting a painting] I determine the effect of sunlight, day and shadow, without being concerned with any detail. This enable me to see in the started painting the whole of it, which my mind already saw before I begun to work - I see it appearing on the panel or canvas rather soon and can consider in this way the harmony of the composed objects and colors.”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Ik bepaal dadelijk en voor vast [nadat ik een schilderij begin] het effect van zonlicht, dag en schaduw, zonder mij met eenige uitvoerigheid op te houden. Hierdoor ben ik in staat gesteld, om in mijne aangelegde schilderij een geheel, dat mijn geest reeds vóór dat ik begon te arbeiden zag, binnen korten tijd op het paneel of doek te zien, en over de harmonie de zamengestelde voorwerpen en kleuren te kunnen oordelen..
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 99:

Color , Way , Appearance , Painting

“We thought about the movie as a global piece of work, not picture, then voices, then music.”

François-Eudes Chanfrault (1974–2016) Composer and musician

Twitchfilm.com interview (September 10, 2008)

Music

“The encroachments of Slavery upon our national policy have been like those of a glacier in a Swiss valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon with his glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, an anachronism of summer, the relic of a bygone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no trace but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed boulders scattered where they made their lair. We have entire faith in the benignant influence of Truth, the sunlight of the moral world, and believe that slavery, like other worn-out systems, will melt gradually before it.”

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

The Election in November 1860 (1860)

Truth , World , Faith , Nature

“Still on the whole the campaign is the best, cleanest and most satisfactory of the war. I have received the most fulsome praise of all men from the President down, but I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told of so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

Letter to wife https://books.google.com/books?id=GGbkHUePtVwC&pg=PA211
1860s

Men , War , World , Fear

“Sarah Palin is absolutely the real deal. You know, I only got to spend a short amount of time with her but, you know, it was been asked if I felt any presence when I was with John McCain or Barack Obama. You know, with Sarah Palin, I don't want to say I felt a presence but she definitely had energy and she definitely went to work for American people, and it disgusts me on how often they try to bash her just for her sincerity. It's just, you know, she really wants to work for America and I mean, I wish people would listen to her and let them, and let her work for us. You know, she wants to serve us. She's not looking for power.”

Joe the Plumber (1973) American conservative activist and commentator

"Glenn talks to Joe the Plumber" at GlennBeck.com (10 December 2008) http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/19055/.

People , Time , Sincerity

“Well, we will indeed see how things develop and what will become of our art! In any case, artists should remain apolitical and only think of their work and dedicate all their energies to this work.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

to Werner Drewes, 10 April 1933; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
both were closely connected with the Bauhaus, closed by the Nazi-regime in 1933
1930 - 1944

Art , Thinking

“You also remember well who first burned the bridges of your railroad, who forced Union men to give up their slaves to work on the rebel forts at Bowling Green, who took wagons and horses and burned houses of persons differing with them honestly in opinion, when I would not let our men burn fence rails for fire or gather fruit or vegetables though hungry, and these were the property of outspoken rebels. We at that time were restrained, tied by a deep seated reverence for law and property. The rebels first introduced terror as a part of their system, and forced contributions to diminish their wagon trains and thereby increase the mobility and efficiency of their columns. When General Buell had to move at a snail's pace with his vast wagon trains, Bragg moved rapidly, living on the country. No military mind could endure this long, and we are forced in self defense to imitate their example. To me this whole matter seems simple. We must, to live and prosper, be governed by law, and as near that which we inherited as possible. Our hitherto political and private differences were settled by debate, or vote, or decree of a court. We are still willing to return to that system, but our adversaries say no, and appeal to war. They dared us to war, and you remember how tauntingly they defied us to the contest. We have accepted the issue and it must be fought out. You might as well reason with a thunder-storm.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

Men , War , Law , Time

“I don't understand the ones that have no sense of hope and invest in hate. That's not gonna work out, you know? It's a waste of your time!”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Interview With Alan Bangs (1999)

Hate , Hope , Understanding , Sense

“I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

“Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System” (2011)

Education , Teachers

“In the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful. Not only is any reference to a particular public or its representatives misleading, but even the concept of an "ideal" receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consideration of art, since all it posits is the existence and nature of man as such. Art, in the same way, posits man's physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his attentiveness. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the audience.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Nirgends erweist sich einem Kunstwerk oder einer Kunstform gegenüber die Rücksicht auf den Aufnehmenden für deren Erkenntnis fruchtbar. Nicht genug, dass jede Beziehung auf ein bestimmtes Publikum oder dessen Repräsentanten vom Wege abführt, ist sogar der Begriff eines "idealen" Aufnehmenden in allen kunsttheoretischen Erörterungen vom Übel, weil diese lediglich gehalten sind, Dasein und Wesen des Menschen überhaupt vorauszusetzen. So setzt auch die Kunst selbst dessen leibliches und geistiges Wesen voraus—seine Aufmerksamkeit aber in keinem ihrer Werke. Denn kein Gedicht gilt dem Leser, kein Bild dem Beschauer, keine Symphonie der Hörerschaft.
The Task of the Translator (1920)

Art , Way , Nature

“So long as a man’s power, that is, his capacity to realize what he has in mind, is bound to the goal, to the work, to the calling, it is, considered in itself, neither good nor evil, it is only a suitable or unsuitable instrument. But as soon as this bond with the goal is broken off or loosened, and the man ceases to think of power as the capacity to do something, but thinks of it as a possession, that is, thinks of power in itself, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil; it is power withdrawn from responsibility, power which betrays the spirit, power in itself.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Source: Between Man and Man (1965), p. 152

Thinking , Evil

“Let me first say that there are ongoing legal proceedings, so I am limited in my ability to speak about those issues. But I’m fully aware that there is a tendency in all of us, as a society, to romanticize people and their families, especially when their work is bigger than themselves. At the risk of sounding cliché, you can’t have rainbows without rain, or roses without thorns. It’s unrealistic for people to have great expectations of us and not allow for basic human normalcy. Our conflicts are reflective of our humanity. We are a family like all others and subject to the same struggles and unfortunate consequences with which all God’s people contend.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Statements during interview with The Root (24 June 2014) http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/06/the_root_interviews_bernice_a_king.html

God , People , Family

“Our enemies are getting stronger and stronger by the way, and we as a country are getting weaker. Even our nuclear arsenal doesn't work. It came out recently they have equipment that is 30 years old. They don't know if it worked. And I thought it was horrible when it was broadcast on television, because boy, does that send signals to Putin and all of the other people that look at us and they say, "That is a group of people, and that is a nation that truly has no clue. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing."”

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

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

People , Way , Boy , Country

“He knew in his heart that there was a relief in not being listened to, sometimes. Power meant responsibility. Advice unacted upon almost always might have been right, and in the working out of whatever plan was followed, there was anyway always blood; better it was on their hands. The good soldier did as he was told, and if he had any sense at all volunteered for nothing, especially promotion.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter XII (p. 65).

Sense , Heart

“As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his first novel, Player Piano, some people love problem-solving and tinkering—and that is the final, irreducible driver of human history. Wars and faiths and leaders come and go, but the problem-solvers’ slow, steady work is the fulcrum upon which history turns.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Afterword to Nooncoming, p. 104
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Love , War , People , Faith

“You should remember that my things are still intended to be paintings, that is to say, they are plastic representations, in and by themselves, not part of a building. Furthermore, they have been made in a small room. Also, that I use subdued colours for the time being, adapting myself to the present surroundings and to the outer world; this does not mean that I should not prefer a pure colouring. Otherwise you might think that I contradict myself in my work.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian in a letter to Theo van Doesburg, 13 Feb. 1917; as cited in 'Stijl' catalogue, 1951, p. 72; in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, pp 13-14
1910's

World , Thinking , Time , Parting

“I am most indebted to E N Parker for calling my attention to Maunder's papers, and for personal encouragement in all the work reported here.”

John A. Eddy (1931–2009) American astronomer

Personality

“I find that a paradigm shift takes place in two ways. First, for all scientists to start working on the new paradigm like happened with Newtonian physics, it takes a long time. But there is another way where a group of people hang onto a model that they are all happy with and they are all finding new problems to work on within that model. For me that model has been that consciousness is the ground of being and now, lots of people are accepting that model. This is a great achievement. This change has happened in less than three generations. That's a tremendous achievement. Old paradigmers, like some of my colleagues from the U of O physics department, will take a long time to change.”

Amit Goswami (1936) American physicist

Interview at NewConnexion (September 2002).

People , Way , Problem , Change

“There were many seas. The sea roared like a tiger. The sea whispered in your ear like a friend telling you secrets. The sea clinked like small change in a pocket. The sea thundered like avalanches. The sea hissed like sandpaper working on wood. The sea sounded like someone vomiting. The sea was dead silent.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 78, p. 239

Secret , Change , Sea , Dead

“All progress is the work of individuals.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Journals of Ayn Rand (1997)

“Matt Lauer: Do you think Muammar Gaddafi has to go as a result of this military intervention?
Gingrich: I think that now — let me draw a distinction. I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Gaddafi. I think there are a lot of allies in the region that we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces, bombing Arab and that country.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Today Show
NBC
2011-03-23
2010s

Way , Thinking , Drawing , Country

“England's improvement by sea and land. To outdo the Dutch without fighting. To pay debts without moneys. To set at work all the poor of England with the growth of our own lands. To prevent unnecessary suits of law; with the benefit of a voluntary register. Directions where vast quantities of timber are to be had for the building of ships, with the advantage of making the great rivers of England navigable. Rules to prevent fires in London, and other great cities; with directions how the several companies of handicraftsmen in London may always have cheap bread and drink. By Andrew Yarranton, Gent. London, printed for the author, &c., 1677.”

Andrew Yarranton (1619–1684) English civil engineer

Full title cited in Patrick Edward Dove (1854, p. 403)
Quotes from England's Improvement, (1677)

Money , Law , Drink , Fight

“.. I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Hard Laughter

Love , Life , Secret , Dependency

“I worked as a volunteer at that session and heard Mahatma Gandhi for the first time. I was profoundly impressed by his personality. Mahatma Gandhi was explaining his weapon of non-violent struggle for securing w:SwarajSwaraj…. Mahatma Ganndhi told his young companions – May be you don’t agree today with what I say. But I am confident that within twenty five or thirty years, we will get Swaraj by this method. This purportedly proved true and just 31 years later India became independent.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

As quoted in Commissions and Omissions by Indian Prime Ministers (1996) by Janak Raj Jai, Volume 1, p. 210

Confidence , Time , Personality

“Suspecting that we would be accused of apologetics for the Khmer Rouge, Chomsky and I went to some pains to point out Khmer Rouge crimes and to stress that our purpose was to emphasize the discrepancy between available facts and media claims and to lay bare what we saw to be a propaganda campaign of selective indignation and benevolence. This effort was futile. With such a powerful propaganda bandwagon underway, from the very beginning the mass media were closed to oppositional voices on the issue, and any scepticism, even identification of outright lies, was treated with hostility and tabbed apologetics for the Khmer Rouge. Our crime was the very act of criticizing the workings of the propaganda system and its relation to US power and policy, instead of focusing attention on approved villainy, which could be assailed violently and ignorantly, without penalty. The issue was framed as a simple one: those for and against Pol Pot. […] I would estimate with some confidence that over 90 percent of the journalists who mentioned Chomsky's name in connection with Cambodia never looked at his original writings on the subject, but merely regurgitated a quickly adopted line. The critics who helped formulate the line also could hardly be bothered looking at the actual writings; the method was almost invariably the use of a few selected quotations taken out of context and embedded in a mass of sarcastic and violent denunciation.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Herman, “Pol Pot, Faurisson, and the Process of Derogation”, in Otero, Ed. (1994), Noam Chomsky: Critical Assessments, pp. 598-615.
1990s

Pain , Hostility , Penalty , Confidence

“People who put principles before people are people who hate people. They don’t much care about how well it works, just about how right it is... they may even like it better if it inflicts enough pain.”

John Barnes book A Million Open Doors

A Million Open Doors (1992)

Pain , Hate , People

“With Pearl Harbour I think our people know full well it was coming. They always have a cover story, of course. [….. ] They knew full well Pearl Harbour was going to be bombed. […. ] They wanted that to bring us into the war. So I think people wanted very much something like 9-11. Whether those specific buildings or not, I don't know. A lot of shady stuff, like the buildings, I understand, were sold or something or insurance policies taken out, you know, just a few weeks before that. Buildings that hold 50,000 people only had, you know, 3000 killed. Lot of folks were told not to come to work. Somebody knew what was going on.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

5 August 2004
Truth Radio

War , People , Understanding , Thinking

“[The war is] a succession of miracles! The old Prussian spirit of Frd. Rex, of Clausewitz, Blücher, York, Gneisenau etc. has again manifested itself, as in 1870-71…The brilliant leading Generals in this war came from My school, they fought under my command in the [First] World War as lieutenants, captains or young majors. Educated by Schlieffen they put the plans he had worked out under me into practice along the same lines as we did in 1914.”

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

Letter to Poultney Bigelow (14 September 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 211
1940s

War , World , Education , School

“Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.”

John Backus (1924–2007) American computer scientist

Quoted in the IBM employee magazine Think in 1979. Cited by his Associated Press obituary http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17704662/

“I have fundamental reservations to this adaptation. First of all I would have liked to see the planet Solaris which the director unfortunately denied me as the film was to be a cinematically subdued work. And secondly — as I told Tarkovsky during one of our quarrels — he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment. What we get in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience which are amplified by her appearance; a strange and incomprehensible appearance. […]”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

On Solaris screening (1972)

Suicide , Appearance

“Here are six popular theses in the philosophical and psychological literature on motivation:1. Motivation is present in the animal kingdom but does not extend throughout it.
2. Motivated beings have a capacity to represent goals and means to goals.
3. A motivation-encompassing attitude may have either a goal or a means as its object.
4. Motivation varies in strength.
5. The stronger an agent’s motivation to A is, in comparison to the agent’s motivation for alternative courses of action, the more likely the agent is to A, other things being equal.
6. Whenever agents act intentionally, there is something they are effectively motivated to do.Divergent conceptions of motivation may be at work in philosophical thought about motivational matters. My concern in this book is a notion of motivation consistent with (among other things) these six claims. Readers who accept all six claims are likely to be more interested in the result than those who do not, but I conjecture that most readers do accept all of these claims, on some reading or other. Also, readers who reject one or more of these theses or who believe that no acceptable conception of motivation is consistent with all of them will be offered good reason to change their minds!”

Alfred Mele (1951) American philosopher

Introduction
Motivation and Agency (2003)

Books , Literature , Motivation , Change

“To create a Fiji where people of different ethnicities, religions and cultures can live and work together for the good of all, can differ without rancour, govern without violence and accept responsibility as reasonable people intent on serving the best interest of all.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Excerpts from a speech to the Fiji Institute of Accountants, 28 April 2005

People , Religion

“We are not working out issues anymore. We are working on a parallel universe, with competing proposals, up or down votes.”

Olympia Snowe (1947) United States Senator from Maine

As quoted in "Andrea Mitchell's exclusive interview with Sen. Olympia Snowe" by Weesie Vieira (29 February 2012).

Universe

““I know it stinks. The whole universe stinks, sometimes. Haven’t you discovered that yet?”
“It doesn’t have to stink!” Rawlins said sharply, his voice rising. “Is that the lesson you’ve learned in all those years? The universe doesn’t stink. Man stinks! And he does it by voluntary choice because he’d rather stink than smell sweet! We don’t have to lie. We don’t have to cheat. We could opt for honor and decency and—” Rawlins stopped abruptly. In a different tone he said, “I sound young as hell to you, don’t I, Charles?”
“You’re entitled to make mistakes,” Boardman said. “That’s what being young is for.”
“You genuinely believe and know that there’s a cosmic malevolence in the workings of the universe?”
Boardman touched the tips of his thick, short fingers together. “I wouldn’t put it that way. There’s no personal power of darkness running things, any more than there’s a personal power of good. The universe is a big impersonal machine. As it functions it tends to put stress on some of its minor parts, and those parts wear out, and the universe doesn’t give a damn about that, because it can generate replacements. There’s nothing immoral about wearing out parts, but you have to admit that from the point of view of the part under stress it’s a stinking deal.””

Robert Silverberg book The Man in the Maze

Source: The Man in the Maze (1969), Chapter 4, section 3 (p. 72)

Lie , Way , Hell , Learning

“I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

"Pastures of Plenty" (1941)

Light

“Our conclusion is that the compañeros of the National Council of Culture are as concerned as all of you are about achieving the best conditions for the development of creative work by artists and intellectuals. It is the duty of the revolution and the revolutionary government to see that there is a highly qualified agency that can be relied upon to stimulate, encourage, develop and guide - yes, guide - that creative spirit.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

“Secretary-General Annan spoke for all of us … when he said that ethnic cleansers and mass murderers can find no refuge in the United Nations, no source of comfort or justification in its charter. We must do more to make these words real. Of course, we must approach this challenge with some considerable degree of humility. It is easy to say, "Never again," but much harder to make it so. Promising too much can be as cruel as caring too little. But difficulties, dangers, and costs are not an argument for doing nothing. When we are faced with deliberate, organized campaigns to murder whole peoples or expel them from their land, the care of victims is important but not enough. We should work to end the violence.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Remarks to the 54th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (September 21, 1999)
1990s

People

“In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care,
For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb
The delicate sense and most divine repose
Of spiritus angelical
Blessed be God,
The measure of his judgments is not fixed
By man's erroneous standard. He discerns
No such inordinate difference and vast
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom
Such disproportion'd fates.
Compared with him,
No man on earth is holy called: they best
Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet
Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield,
To him of his own works the praise, his due.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Composed at midnight, as quoted in The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb, p. 72.

God , Fate , Angels , Feeling

“Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage, or from nature.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter II, Sec. 5

Nature , Perfection

“Work is the grand cure for all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,—honest work, which you intend getting done.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, (April 2, 1866), reported in A dictionary of quotations in prose, edited by A. L. Ward (1889).
Attributed

“A body of work may be reviled — mostly by those who have no knowledge of its workings — and yet still carry elements of what can only be considered eternal truths.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

Part One: The Hidden People, "Border Spirit" p. 334
The Little Country (1991)

Truth , Knowledge

“Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools, he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly.”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

The Lottery (1948)

Fools , Way

“What used to be called a Canadian novel was a kind of prairie frontier story, but it was phony. In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.”

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

On the generic Canadian novel, in the New York Times (29 December 1988).

Love , Children , People , Courage

“I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

As quoted in The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Inspirational Quotes (2005) by Wendy Toliver, p. 18.

“Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. This confrontation is willed by God who wants this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a new age begins.”

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

Former French president Jacques Chirac claimed in late 2009 that Bush made these statements to him at some point prior the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 while "appealing to him as a Christian" and attempting to convince him to have France join the invasion. The Independent, 2 January 2010 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/richard-ingrams/richard-ingramsrsquos-week-blair-must-be-quizzed-over-bushs-biblical-crusade-1855418.html
Attributed, Private/attributed

God , People , Age

“Did you hear about the high school football coach who got in trouble for letting his players have sex with his wife? How does that work? "Robinson! Get in there!"”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Tailgate Party (2009)

School , Sex , Football

“There seems to be a general consensus of opinion among modern scholars that the Bhagavadgītā, as it now appears in the Epic, is not an original poem composed by a single hand, but an ancient work, rewritten and enlarged. But all are not agreed as to the history of the poem's composition.”

W. Douglas P. Hill (1884–1962) British Indologist

Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 18. (12. The composition of the Bhagavadgītā)

History , Appearance

“The work on satisfactory formulation of technical patents was a true blessing for me. It compelled me to be many-sided in thought, and also offered important stimulation for thought about physics. Following a practical profession is a blessing for people of my type. Because the academic career puts a young person in a sort of compulsory situation to produce scientific papers in impressive quantity, a temptation to superficiality arises that only strong characters are able to resist.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

From his "Autobiographische Skizze" (18 April 1955), original German version here http://philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/kursarchiv/WS99/Skizze.pdf. Translation from Einstein from 'B' to 'Z by John J. Stachel (2001), p. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=OAsQ_hFjhrAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Original German version: Formulierung technischer Patente ein wahrer Segen für mich. Sie zwang zu vielseitigem Denken, bot auch wichtige Anregungen für das physikalische Denken. Endlich ist ein praktischer Beruf für Menschen meiner Art überhaupt ein Segen. Denn die akademische Laufbahn versetzt einen jungen Menschen in eine Art Zwangslage, wissenschaftliche Schriften in impressiver Menge zu produzieren — eine Verführung zur Oberflächlichkeit, der nur starke Charaktere zu widerstehen vermögen. ("Autobiographische Skizze", p. 12)
1950s
Variant: "Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications — a temptation to superficiality." As quoted in "Who Knew?" http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0505/resources_who.html at NationalGeographic.com (May 2005).

People , Strong , Personality

“Was forty, then, too old for work like this?
Why should it be? He'd never been afraid—
His eye was sure, his hand was steady...
But dreams had meanings.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Dreams

“We're working with NATO, the longest military alliance in the history of the world, to really turn our attention to terrorism.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

World , History

“I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:408 (26 May 1844)
1840s

“The first great work that men are to attend in this world is the eternal safety and security of their souls; the next great work is to know, to be assured, that it shall go well with their souls forever.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A Cabinet of Jewels

Men , World , Soul

“There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed. … So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is.””

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

Fortune Brainstorm 2008 "2018: Life on the Net"-panel http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4631871144083884704

Way , Change , Waiting

“We're not Republican or Democrat. We won't fold into one party or the other. We're a tax-paying party that can make a difference and a party of normal people who want change. Bigger government and higher taxes is not working. Right now we're at a real crossroads to make change, and the bottom line is there's never been so much disdain for politicians.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Jourdan, Kristi, Tea Party hopeful - gives voters third choice, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1B, March 8, 2010]

People , Change

“I was surprised, while preparing this lecture, to notice how, among my friends who had read the book, a division into two groups appeared. Both groups are equally discerning and educated, and as far as I can tell, equal in numbers. One group is eager to say that they don't understand a word of it, and there are artists and historians among them. Those of the other group claim that they understood it all on first reading, without difficulty. Of course I believe them both, without understanding the combination that separates them so sharply. Perhaps distinctive and contrasting features in the comprehension of works of art are responsible. What I say speaks to some, but not to others. Some are ready, and others are not. But when both someday find that they agree in understanding it, that day may be its last as a book alive in the dissension over its intelligibility.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

George Kubler (1982)"The Shape of Time, Reconsidered," in: Perspecta (Volume 19, MIT Press)

Books , Education , Art , Intelligence

“The functional validity of a working hypothesis is not a priori certain, because often it is initially based on intuition. However, logical deductions from such a hypothesis provide expectations (so called prognoses) as to the circumstances under which certain phenomena will appear in nature. Such a postulate or working hypothesis can then be substantiated by additional observations or by experiments especially arranged to test details. The value of the hypothesis is strengthened if the observed facts fit the expectation within the limits of permissible error.”

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen (1904–1983) Dutch geologist

Source: "The Scientific Character of Geology," 1961, p. 454; As cited in: Alberta Research Council, ‎Research Council of Alberta (1964), Bulletin - Alberta Research Council. Vol. 15-17, p. 31

Error , Nature , Appearance

“I don't see why escapist literature should not also be a work of art.”

P. D. James (1920–2014) English crime writer

Time to be Earnest - a Fragment of Biography

Art , Literature

“Because, young folks, if you can learn to work together in Godly ways, you can settle any problem that the mind of man can raise.”

Henry Schriver (1914–2011) American politician

Cows, Kids, and Co-ops

Way , Problem , Learning

“The reason why lime makes a solid structure on being combined with water and sand seems to be this: that rocks, like all other bodies, are composed of the four elements. Those which contain a larger proportion of air, are soft; of water, are tough from the moisture; of earth, hard; and of fire, more brittle. Therefore, if limestone, without being burned, is merely pounded up small and then mixed with sand and so put into the work, the mass does not solidify nor can it hold together. But if the stone is first thrown into the kiln, it loses its former property of solidity by exposure to the great heat of the fire, and so with its strength burnt out and exhausted it is left with its pores open and empty. Hence, the moisture and air in the body of the stone being burned out and set free, and only a residuum of heat being left lying in it, if the stone is then immersed in water, the moisture, before the water can feel the influence of the fire, makes its way into the open pores; then the stone begins to get hot, and finally, after it cools off, the heat is rejected from the body of the lime.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter V, Sec. 2

Way , Feeling , Lying , Water

“To amuse is not to teach. The object of teaching is to erect a framework of knowledge in a child's mind and gradually to bring the child as near as may be to the average level of intelligence. Later in life the facts taught by experience and new discoveries will add themselves to this framework. It is wrong to attempt to upset this natural order and to appeal to a child's mind by diverting it with the spectacle of modern life. Teaching by means of pictures, radio, and the cinema is in itself ineffective; these methods must not be used unless they involve (and this is possible) some effort or special enthusiasm. That which is learned without difficulty is soon forgotten, and for the same reason, oral instruction which does not require the pupil's personal participation is almost always rather useless. Eloquence slides in and out of young minds. To listen is not to work.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Naturally this does not apply to the teaching of modern languages.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Life , Intelligence , Nature , Knowledge

“I staggered through my career and came out the other end, alive. I made some films that meant something to me. In my opinion, they weren’t all great, and they weren’t all successful, but they sure were ‘me’. And this is what I was going through or thinking or feeling as a director at the time, and I’m very proud of them. A lot of great directors just never had the chance to have their work appreciated and celebrated and watched, all these years after they were made. So, man, what do you want out of life? It’s great!”

John Carpenter (1948) American film director, screenwriter and producer

The Den of Geek interview: John Carpenter http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/halloween/13379/the-den-of-geek-interview-john-carpenter (June 3, 2008)

Life , Feeling , Thinking , Chance

“In their day, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

"Let us advance under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and the Juche Idea" http://www.korea-dpr.com/lib/Kim%20Jong%20Il%20-%204/LET%20US%20ADVANCE%20UNDER%20THE%20BANNER%20OF%20MARXISM.pdf (3 May 1983)