Quotes about work (10000 quotes, page 96)

“(…) New knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

(...) De nouvelles connaissances conduisent à reconnaître dans la théorie de l'évolution plus qu'une hypothèse. Il est en effet remarquable que cette théorie se soit progressivement imposée à l'esprit des chercheurs, à la suite d'une série de découvertes faites dans diverses disciplines du savoir. La convergence, nullement recherchée ou provoquée, des résultats de travaux menés indépendamment les uns des autres, constitue par elle même un argument significatif en faveur de cette théorie.
early news reports mistranslated the French phrase plus qu'une hypothèse as "more than one hypothesis". http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/LifeScience/PhysicalAnthropology/EvolutionFact/Evolution/Evolution.htm
Message to the participants in the Plenary of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 22 October 1996
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/pont_messages/1996/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19961022_evoluzione_fr.html (French)

Knowledge

“The student should have enough knowledge of his or her cultural tradition to know how it got to be the way it is. This involves both political and social history, on the one hand, as well as the mastery of some of the great philosophical and literary texts of the culture on the other. It involves reading not only texts that are of great value, like those of Plato, but many less valuable that have been influential, such as the works of Marx. For the United States, the dominant tradition is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain the European tradition. The United States is, after all, a product of the European Enlightenment. However, you do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. Works from other cultural traditions need to be studied as well.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

The Storm Over the University (December 6, 1990)

Way , History , Understanding , Knowledge

“Charlie McCarthy: I can't take this schoolwork any more - it's driving me nuts.
Edgar Bergen: Well Charlie, I'm sorry, but hard work never killed anyone.
Charlie McCarthy: Still, there's no use in taking chances.”

Edgar Bergen (1903–1978) American actor, radio performer, comedian and ventriloquist

Quoted in Todd Harris Goldman, Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes (2001) p. 136

Chance

“Pure psychic automatism, by which one seeks to express, be it verbally, in writing, or in any other manner, (is) the real working of the mind. Dictated by the unconsciousness, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, and free from aesthetic or moral preoccupations.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Quote from 'Manifesto du Surréalisme', André Breton, Paris, Editions KRA, 1929
1920's

Exercises

“Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 19, § 233
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

History

“The ranchers want to keep us divided in order to keep us weak. Many of us have signed individual "work contracts" with the ranchers or contractors, contracts in which they had all power. These contracts were farces, one more cynical joke at our impotence. That is why we must get together and bargain collectively. We must use the only strength that we have, the force of our numbers. The ranchers are few; we are many. United we shall stand.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Plan of Delano (1965)

“Suggesting evil is human doesn't mean we can always understand it, or doesn't mean there's only one way of understanding it. It's sort of like a great work of art. You can never fully absorb it. It's got many dimensions. It lives on through time, in different ways.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

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

Art , Way , Understanding , Evil

“After the fascists have succeeded in crushing the vanguard elements and the threat they pose is removed, the ruling class goes on about the business of making profits as usual. The significance of the “new fascist arrangement" lies in the fact that this business-as-usual is accompanied by concessions to the degenerate segment of the working class, with the aim of creating a buffer zone between the ruling class and the still potentially revolutionary segments of the lower classes.”

George Jackson (activist) (1941–1971) activist, Marxist, author, member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family

Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 119

Business

“Being an MP is the sort of job all working-class parents want for their children — clean, indoors and no heavy lifting.”

Diane Abbott (1953) British Labour Party politician

Independent, 18 January 1994.
1990s, 1994

Children , Parent

“I have always been a proponent of a national health care system. It just seemed eminently fair and right. How can we call this a civilized society when the children or parents of the rich get the medical attention they need in order to stay alive, while members of working-class families, who lack health insurance, have to die or needlessly suffer--or go hopelessly into debt to get the care they need? This is an outrageous injustice and it cannot be rationally defended.”

Bernie Sanders book Outsider in the House

Outsider in the House (1997), p.175
1990s

Children , Health , Family , Parent

“Now the leap by which this reasoning lands us in labour as the sole constituent element of value appears to me so surprising that I am prepared to learn that the yet unpublished portions of Das Kapital contain supplementary or elucidatory matter which may set it in a new light. Meanwhile the analysis appears to be given as complete and adequate, so far as it goes, and I can, therefore, only take it as I find it and try to test its validity. But instead of directly confronting it with what seems to be the true analysis of the phenomenon of exchange, I will follow it out a little further, and we shall see that Marx himself introduces a modification into his result (or develops a half-latent implication in it), in such a way as to vitiate the very analysis on which that result is founded, and to lead us, if we work it out, to what I regard as the true solution of the problem.”

Philip Wicksteed (1844–1927) English economist

Page 712.
"The Marxian Theory of Value: Das Kapital: A Criticism" (1884)

Way , Problem , Light , Learning

“I myself have employed the close-up, which is the cinema's only real invention. The fragment of the object has also been of use to me; by isolating it you personalize it. All this work has led me to regard the phenomenon of objectivity as a new and highly contemporary value in itself”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

quote of c. 1927
Quote in 'Autour de Ballet Méchanique', as quoted in Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota; published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, pp. 21-22
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Quotes , Personality

“People say that if we work for the Single European Act, women will get their rights, the water will be purer, and training will be better. That is rubbish. It is part of the attempt to consolidate the EEC.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech to the House of Commons (23 February 1989) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/feb/23/european-community
1980s

Women , People , Water , Parting

“The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage

Way , Light

“.. the works of Mozart. They create a welcome pause amidst the storms of our inner life, a vision of consolation and hope, but we hear them like sounds of another, vanished and essential unfamiliar age. Clashing discords, loss of equilibrium..”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from: On the Spiritual in Art, 1911; as cited in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 17
1910 - 1915

Life , Age , Hope , Loss

“Consideration has not been given … to this big distinction as to how far men work through machines or as machines.”

Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz (1797–1860) German politician and publisher

Movement of Production (1843), as translated in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1988), p. 30

Men

“It is appropriate at the outset of this discussion to consider the reasons for and the effect of the division of work. It is sufficient for our purpose to note the following factors.
:Why Divide Work?
:* Because men differ in nature, capacity and skill, and gain greatly in dexterity by specialization;
:* Because the same man cannot be at two places at the same time;
:* Because one man cannot do two things at the same time;
:* Because the range of knowledge and skill is so great that a man cannot within his life-span know more than a small fraction of it. In other words, it is a question of human nature, time, and space.
In a shoe factory it would be possible to have 1,000 men each assigned to making complete pairs of shoes…”

Luther H. Gulick (1892–1993) American academic

Source: "Notes on the Theory of Organization," 1937, p. 3 ; on the division of work

Life , Men , Shoe , Question

“They, economics and evolution, are both examples of a larger process, which has been at work in this part of the universe for a very long time. This is the process of the development of structures of increasing complexity and improbability. The evolutionary process always operates through mutation and selection and has involved some distinction between the genotype which mutates and the phenotype which is selected. The process by which the genotype constructs the phenotype may be described as "organization". Economic development manifesto itself largely in the production of commodities, that is, goods and services. It originates, however, in ideas, plans, and attitudes in the human mind. These are the genotypes in economic development. This whole process indeed can be described as a process in the growth of knowledge. What the economist calls "capital" is nothing more than human knowledge imposed on the material world. Knowledge and the growth of knowledge, therefore, is the essential key to economic development. Investment, financial systems and economic organizations and institutions are in a sense only the machinery by which a knowledge process is created and expressed.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1977) Economic Development as an Evolutionary System, Fifth World Congress of the International Economic Association, Tokyo, Aug.-Sept. 1977.
1970s

World , Idea , Knowledge , Sense

“Do you consider, my dear maggotty sir [cosy-name for his friend], what a deal of work history pictures require to what little dirty subjects of coal horses and jackasses and such figures as I fill up with; no, you don't consider anything about that part of the story... But to be serious (as I know you love to be), do you really think that a regular composition in the Landskip [landscape] way should ever be filled with History, or any figures but such as fill a place (I won't say stop a gap) or create a little business for the eye to be drawn from the trees in order to return to them with more glee.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath 23 Aug. 1767; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 379 (Appendix A - Letter I)
1755 - 1769

Love , Way , History , Business

“While I was mayor, I learned that government is a system of checks and balances — you can't simply walk in and change things. It takes time. I used to joke that it would be nice if a magic wand came with the job, if I could just wave it and make things work the way they're supposed to. But unfortunately it's not that easy. The bureaucracy is so huge that in a lot of situations all I can do is tell people the truth and let the chips fall where they may.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)

People , Truth , Way , Learning

“We had some problems with the Howard newspaper strip, which led to problems with the Howard book, which ultimately led to the lawsuit. Marvel wouldn't pay the artist to draw it. Gene Colan and I were supposed to get a percentage of the syndicate's take for the strip. The problem was, the money came in 90 days, 120 days, six months — I don't remember how long exactly — after the strips were published. So, essentially, the artist was working for nothing up until that time, and no artist can afford to do that. [In comparison with Stan Lee and 's Spider-Man comic strip, ] Stan, as publisher of Marvel, had a regular salary coming in, and John Romita, I believe, was also on staff at the time. They didn't have quite the same problem.”

Steve Gerber (1947–2008) Comic writer

Comic Book Artist #7 (reprinted in Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 3 (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2005)): "Steve Gerber's Crazy Days", p. 66

Money , Books , Problem , Time

“Ultimately, the main product being sold by human potential gurus is hope itself. It should be obvious that in itself this is not a bad thing. We all need hope. Without hope, there is no point in making plans for the future. Without hope, there is no point in working on a relationship or setting goals. Thus, insofar as participation in Large Group Awareness Training increases one's hope for finding one's way and for achieving one's goals, it is good. Even false hope may be better than no hope at all.”

Robert Todd Carroll book The Skeptic's Dictionary

"Large group awareness training program" http://skepdic.com/lgsap.html, The Skeptic's Dictionary

Hope , Way , Future , Falseness

“I have a garden and across the road, a park. I never go for walks, but I look out the window and 'ask for permission' [to paint the view] as I call it. If I need some green, I find it there. In that sense, I’m a very old-fashioned painter, tied to nature. But I remain modern in that I execute some rather impious structures. I will react if I feel that my paintings, though abstract, become too naturalistic. I have another studio in Italy and I worked a lot there this summer. I still depend on my surroundings, so some of my work was very influenced by the Italian landscape, its olive trees and the very cold green color of the leaves. You could identify the specific landscape in those paintings and it drove me crazy. So I had to destroy them. But even destruction can still help underline what is good about a picture.”

Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist

1995 and later, interview in Kirkeby’s home studio, Copenhagen (2012)

Color , Feeling , Fashion , Nature

“Labour was different to other European Social Democratic Parties in that it was never aggressively secular and was not divided by confessional fissures. Its founding act, the Dock Strike of 1889 was brokered by the Salvation Army and Cardinal Manning. It was never a revolutionary party that became more peaceable but was, from the start, committed to extending democracy within the inherited constitution. It also had a base of support among the working class that secured British democracy from Fascism and Communism and that was because of its paradoxical nature, as conservative as it was radical, as patriotic as it was nationalist. The greatest failure of New Labour is that it led rather than resisted the definition of the European Union as a neo-liberal project and did not develop a constructive alternative to the status quo. It seemed incapable of distinguishing between internationalism and globalisation.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The case against remaining in the EU on LabourList.org, 2 June 2016 http://labourlist.org/2016/06/why-should-labour-support-the-european-union-the-case-for-out/

Democracy , Communication , Failure , Support

“It was not so long ago that the Bible enjoyed a stranglehold similar to that of the Quran over vast populations in the West. The theocracies propped up by the Bible in Europe and America had enacted similar sagas of slaughter and pillage for several centuries. But a sustained Western scholarship showed up the Bible for what it was. “It would be more consistent,” proclaimed Thomas Pain, “that we call it [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God.” The spell of Jehovah was broken…. The rest is history. Christianity is now seeking a refuge in countries like India where its rout in the West remains unknown.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

God , Pain , History , Country

“Aloof with hermit-eye I scan
The present works of present man —
A wild and dreamlike trade of blood and guile,
Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"Ode to Tranquility", st. 4 (1801)

Smile , Tear

“The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1, 2. Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6. His “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Micah 5:2. And the Son of God declares concerning Himself: “The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting. … When He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.””

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

Proverbs 8:22-30.
Patriarchs and Prophets 34.1 https://egwwritings.org/?ref=en_PP.34.1&para=84.75

God , Peace , Way , Nature

“We need a philosophy of the individual in society and a political culture that values the social goods that give security, meaning and value to people: home, family, friendships, good work, locality and communities of belonging. These were the concerns of the 19th century debates between social liberals and ethical socialists which created the modern spirit of the left. We need to re-invent a plural and ethical socialism rooted in the ordinary life of the individual producing and relating in society. The central value of this socialism, alongside liberty, is equality.”

Jon Cruddas (1962) British politician

Tribune Magazine, Building the future politics on our toxic present, 15 June 2009 http://www.tribunemagazine.org/2009/06/building-the-future-politics-on-our-toxic-present/

Life , Friendship , People , Family

“It is what makes conscious of the conditions and laws of observing which applied in this manner become a theme on its own. The activity of consciousness depending on the way the work itself proceeds, becomes the subject of my attention this way and it is precisely because of this voyeuristic attitude toward the own observation and experience of the subject that the conscious analytic dimension in the work shows.”

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

Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 30 : About the ambivalence in his own work.

Law , Way , Dependency

“Building weapons that we don’t need, don’t work, and aren’t necessary, and have no mission — that’s not bad politics, that’s robbery.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in "Working for New Priorities," http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0002/intervw.html interview with Anita Merina, NEA Today (February 2000)

“Photographers learn to interpret photographs in that technical way because they want to understand and use that ‘language’ themselves (just as musicians learn a more technical musical language than the layman needs). Social scientists who want to work with visual materials will have to learn to approach them in this more studious and time-consuming way”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Becker (1978) cited in: Peter Hamilton (2006) Visual Research Methods'. Volume 1. p. 214.

Music , Way , Understanding , Learning

“The space of time in which a great work can now be accomplished is not marvellous. Brain, muscle, materials, and the means of rapid transport are instantly at command. If one has capital and a well-considered plan, the thing does itself. But that which is wonderful and which I can scarcely believe, although I have been in the midst of it, is the noble, artistic result which has come from the work of American artists who have had only a few months' time to prepare those very designs for the great buildings of the Exposition which have actually been executed with little change from the sketches which were presented in February, 1891.”

Daniel Burnham (1846–1912) American architect and urban designer

Burnham (1891) attributed in: Charles Moore (1921) Daniel H. Burnham, architect, planner of cities http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7205061M/Daniel_H._Burnham_architect_planner_of_cities. p. 72-73

Change , Time

“I believe any philosophizing about art is absurd and empty. Unfortunately, in the last century a phenomenon has emerged in which the status of “work of art” were granted to many foolish, tacky, and distasteful works as long as they were accompanied by ten or twelve pages of philosophizing justification.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Dialogues on enlightenment and reason (2013)

Art

“The Exxon Corporation was, and is, working hard to take the lead in setting the standard for the environmental clean-up along the 1,200 miles of damaged Alaskan coastline. Yet, despite all their efforts they still hear cries of foul. News articles claim the corporation is falling short of its responsibilities. Video footage of out-of-work fishermen sitting in idle boats carries the depressing message that the fishing industry cannot provide a livelihood for several more years. Exxon has spent billions of dollars related to that tragic oil spill. In spite of their efforts they continue to pay the price in money, damaged reputation, and ill-will.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 2

Money , Fish , Effort

“I am not interested so much in behaviour from which you infer consciousness because that is a mug's game. I don't know whether you're conscious. I take a good guess that you are and you can take a good guess that I am but it's not something you can prove. We can't work out what someone else feels.”

Igor Aleksander (1937) scientist

The simple things are hardest (2005)

Feeling , Game

“Analytical tools have their limitations in a turbulent world. These tools work best when parameters are known, assumptions are minimal, and the future is not fuzzy.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Introduction to the 2002 edition, p. 12
The Heart of Change, (2002)

World , Future

“After a year of working in the restaurant, one night I decided to slip Tom my telephone number. We were standing in front of the giant fireplace. 'Did you hear I was single?' I asked. The next day his secretary called me and said, 'Mr. Girardi would like to know if you're free to have dinner this evening.' 'Absolutely not,' I told her. 'Tell Mr. Girardi if he wants to take me out on a date, he needs to call me himself and ask me and give me enough time to prepare.' You know how men are, especially if they are successful. They expect you to drop everything right away. That's not how I work, I don't care who you are. He did call me back himself, and he asked me out on a date like a gentleman.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

pg. 146
Pretty Mess book (2018)

Men , Time , Success , Night

“All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors or philanthropists; but all men can join in that gigantic and godlike work, the progress of creation. Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

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

Men , Nature , Universe , Parting

“Maybe that’s why everyone died young. Some of the questions you didn’t dare ask about Earth People’s Park were: Where is it? Who will run it? Will anyone want to do the real work? Like the global economy now, it was just something assumed, and the people in the room were there to embody the zeitgeist of it and kill the people who didn’t belong (or seem to belong) in the body of the zeitgeist.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

People , Question

“For if art, like religion, belongs to no country, it is perhaps itself the only country and the only true religion. Only those hear its call who have that siren’s song within them. The inner riches of the eyes bring out the secret virtues of the work, and little by little they begin to speak… Every artist, every work of every artist, establishes, in his or its own absolutely inaccessible way, this contact of the spirit with the spirit. Provided of course, that the viewer is in 'a state of grace.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), p. 104

Secret , Religion , Art , Way

“The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 74.

Thinking

“Cameron made the Hugo Young speech, where he claimed the co-operative movement, building societies, the mutuals, the early trade unions for the Conservatives, and we were completely silent. That's linked to the excessive statism of Brown. We had to reclaim Labour history. It was also a way of talking about capitalism again, and resistance to capitalism. And working [in London Citizens] with low-paid people, most of whom were women, had reminded me of their concern for their parents and their children, and their commitment to work and not wanting to be on welfare.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The Guardian article, 19 July 2011 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jul/19/lord-glasman-radical-traditionalist

Women , Children , People , Way

“You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe. But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.”

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

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Life , God , Age , Fear

“The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it's called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine—religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you'll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn't matter; try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia, it works—works all the time. Name me one religion that stands for that, or ever has. Wherever you look in the world and you try to remove the shackles of ignorance and disease stupidity from women, it is invariably the clericy that stands in the way, or in the case of—now, furthermore, if you are going to grant this to Catholic charities, say, which I would hope are doing a lot of work in Africa, if I was a member of a church that had preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms, I'd be putting some conscience money into Africa too, I must say.”

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

Debate vs. Tony Blair, "Be it Resolved, Religion is a Force for Good in the World" (November 26, 2010), Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, Ontario.
2010s, 2010

Women , Money , Health , Stupidity

“It's not possible to forget pictures. Anyone who works in them thinks of them constantly.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

How To Get Along In Hollywood (1948)

Thinking , Forgetting

“I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Introduction to "It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Time

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

Beauty , Way , Nature , Problem

“In Fall, October, November, I'm usually at work in Heeze, for interior studies. That is a beautiful, and the most quite time; the leaf of the trees [dropped! ], what gives in summer such a strong green light into the domestic interiors. It was in the lodging of the good Saskia [Ciska].... that I always got very special care.”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson:) In 't najaar, october, November ben ik gemeenlijk in nl:Heeze aan 't werk, voor interieurstudies. Dat is een mooie, en de rustigste tijd; 't blad van de bomen [af!], waardoor zomers zoo'n groen licht in de binnenhuizen valt. In 't logement van de goede Saskia [Ciska].. ..ondervond ik dan altijd heel bizondere zorgen.
Source: 1900 - 1922, Onder de Menschen: Suze Robertson' (1912), p. 34

Beauty , Tree , Study , Light

“German erudition of his time he held in little esteem. “They go to work like galley slaves,” was his charge. “They do not write on a theme because inspired; but the theme comes first, and with assiduous and laborious study they hope to evolve something brilliant out of it.””

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

describing the view of Stendhal, p. 84.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Hope , Study , Time

“There is but one special interest that we should be working for, and that would solve just about all of our problems, and that is our liberty.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Speech on the Patriot Act, 2003 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O7D7nDF0U8
2000s, 2001-2005

Problem

“The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Imaginationland" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/10/imaginationland.html, The Daily Dish (25 October 2007)

Truth , History , Falseness

“The ministers work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Commenting on the 'Negro Project' in a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939. http://smithlibraries.org/digital/items/show/495 - Sanger manuscripts, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
(Note: There is a different date circulated, e.g. Oct. 19, 1939; but Dec. 10 is the correct date of Mrs. Sanger's letter to Mr. Gamble.)

Hope , Idea , Training

“By putting the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership over the product of their work, Web 2.0 provides an incredibly efficient mechanism to harvest the economic value of the free labor provided by the very, very many and concentrate it into the hands of the very, very few.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

" Web 2.0lier than thou http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/10/web_20ier_than.php," Rough Type, October 23, 2006.

“The art of resting is a part of the art of working. A man who is tired and greatly in need of rest cannot do any good work. We are all familiar with those terrible mornings after sleepless nights when our brains refuse to function. It would be useless then to attempt to apply the principles of the art of working. Those principles presuppose mind and body to be in good condition. The human organism cannot live without alternating work and rest.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Art , Parting , Night

“[…] there are many opportunities for development in Rajkot. There are numerous avenues for growth in the domain of education. After the Gujarat earthquake we have decided to develop earthquake management system in Gujarat. One of the departments connected with that work will be set up in Rajkot. I want that Rajkot should become a shiksha dham [centre of education] and a centre of hope for the people of this region. Rajkot has the distinction of being considered the foremost city of Saurashtra.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2002, Modi election campaign speech, 2002

People , Education , Hope

“I have more dumb luck thank anybody I know. There must be a convey of guardian angels working twenty-four hours a day looking after me[…] Like the night I first got to Nashville that I laid down in the middle of Broadway, waiting to get run over. It didn't happen […] I could swear they were keeping me alive just to see what I'd get next, I'm glad they feel that way. I'm trying to help them a little more this days.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

[The Facts of Life: And Other Dirty Jokes, 29, Random House Digital, 2003, 9780375758607, Nelson, Willie; McMurtry, Larry]

Angels , Way , Feeling , Waiting

“Even though I had long been taught that the genes of the brain are the governors of behavior, the absolute masters of our fate, our work showed that, in the brain as in bacteria, genes are also servants of the environment.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)
Context: Even though I had long been taught that the genes of the brain are the governors of behavior, the absolute masters of our fate, our work showed that, in the brain as in bacteria, genes are also servants of the environment.... An environmental stimulus... activates modulatory interneurons that release serotonin. The serotonin acts on the sensory neuron to increase cyclic AMP and to cause protein kinase A and MAP kinase to move to the nucleus and activate CREB. The activation of CREB, in turn, leads to the expression of genes that changes the function and the structure of the cell.

Fate , Behavior

“Speaking purely for myself, I can say that it was my very acute feeling for the matière, for the substance of painting, which pushed me into thinking about the possibilities of the medium. I wanted to create a kind of substance by means of brush-work. But that is the kind of discovery which one makes gradually, though once a beginning had been made other discoveries follow. Thus it was that I subsequently began to introduce sand, sawdust and metal filings into my pictures. For I suddenly saw the extent to which colour is related to the substance... So my great delight was the 'material' character which I could give to my pictures by introducing these extraneous elements. In short, they provided me with a means of getting further away from idealism in 'representing' the things with which I was concerned.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1921 - 1945, p. 76 - quote of Braque from 'Cahiers d'art', 1954, ed. Dora Vallier

Feeling , Thinking , Painting

“And you, my fine poet, who thought that the earth
To another such minstrel could never give birth,
Already your works are all thrown on the shelf,
And their author condemn'd as an ignorant elf.—
Yes; look thro' the world, and this truth you will find
That, once out of sight, you are soon out of mind.”

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

Fable (Imitated from the French of La Motte.)
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Truth , World , Birth

“[Voluntary social work] has indeed become a new profession and quite a large number of people now make their livelihood by such work. At the same time the State has expanded its social services beyond all recognition within the space of a single generation and a large part of the produce of taxation is now devoted to every form of social amelioration… I should like to see us less concerned with palliation and more concerned with providing the means whereby our people by self-help, that demoded Victorian virtue, should be able to work out their own salvation, even if in fear and trembling.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 292-3

People , Fear , Time , Help

“As I understand it, the claim is that the less you use Homeopathy, the better it works. Sounds plausible to me.”

David Deutsch (1953) British physicist

http://web.archive.org/web/20040817050226/http://www.qubit.org/people/david/index.php?blog=20040808030513
Weblog

Understanding

“The executive in every walk of life, whether he knows it or not, directs social forces and determines the destiny of countless people, not only those who work in his immediate organization but among the larger public as well. He should comprehend this and recognize his responsibility. The role of statesman is thrust upon him by the nature and demands of the position he occupies. To fulfill it he mnst be a philosopher. But he cannot be a successful philosopher unless he understands the inherent life of institutions, the reasons why people in institutional situations behave as they do. This knowledge is the philosophy and technique of management.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 1, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 418-9

Life , People , Understanding , Nature

“In my larger work, the Mishnah Torah, I have contented myself with briefly stating the principles of our faith and its fundamental truths, together with such hints as approach a clear exposition. In this work, however, I address those who have studied philosophy and have acquired sound knowledge, and who while firm in religious matters are perplexed and bewildered on account of the ambiguous and figurative expressions employed in the holy writings.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Introduction

Truth , Faith , Knowledge , Study

“Business cycles are a type of fluctuation found in the aggregate activity of nations that organize their work mainly in business enterprises: a cycle consists of expansions occurring at about the same time in many economic activities, followed by similarly general recessions, contractions, and revivals which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle; this sequence of changes is recurrent but not periodic; in duration business cycles vary from more than one year to ten or twelve years; they are not divisible into shorter cycles of similar character with amplitudes approximating their own.”

Arthur F. Burns (1904–1987) American economist and diplomat

Arthur F. Burns and George W. Mitchell (1946). Measuring business cycles. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. p. 3; Cited in: Robert J. Gordon, ed. The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, 1986. p. 2

Business , Change , Time

“My position on pornography is quite simple. You can argue about Penthouse or Playboy or things of that ilk. But child pornography, a picture of a child engaged in a sexual act, is a photograph of a crime and you cannot argue about that. It is, per se, illegal, illicit and immoral. It is unfortunate that my work is taken up by people with whom I am not allied.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

1988 interview with Andrew Vachss, published in the January '89 issue of The Face

People

“The Holy Spirit! This is the Spirit's role: to bring Christ's work to fulfillment. Enriched with the Spirit's gifts, you will have the power to move beyond the piecemeal, the hollow utopia, the fleeting, to offer the consistency and certainty of Christian witness!”

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

2008, Youth Day Vigil (19 July 2008)

Christ

“You're basing your laws and your whole outlook on natural life on mythology. It won't work. That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them: India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them-all these problems. They're all religious problems.”

Jack Kevorkian (1928–2011) American pathologist, euthanasia activist

Quoted in "Years of Minutes"‎ - Page 339 - by Andy Rooney - 2004
2000s, 2004

Life , World , Law , Nature

“If you read some of the Parisian newspapers, among others the 'Figaro', so beloved of the right-thinking public, you must have learned that I am part of a group of artists who opened a private exhibition [in the art-gallery of Durand-Ruel in Paris, April 1876]. You must also have seen what favour this exhibition enjoys in the eyes of these gentlemen [Berthe refers to the critical articles in Paris with all their mockery about her works]. On the other hand, we have been praised in the radical newspaper, but you don't read those [her aunts]! Well, at least we are getting attention, and we have enough self-esteem not to care. My brother-in-law Edouard Manet is not with us [Manet didn't participate in this first Impressionist show, initiated by Degas ]. Speaking of success, he [Manet] has just been rejected by the Salon; he, too, is perfectly good-humored about his failure.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

In a letter to her aunts, 1876; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 155
Berthe wrote this letter after the second Impressionist exhibition of April 1876 where she was participating with 19 pictures (Monet with 18!)
1871 - 1880

Law , Art , Failure , Thinking

“O’Hara was in his most non-stop way of talking, saying that the pictures put him in mind of Tiepolo [Spanish wall-painter, c. 1750]. Certain cupola frescoes. Suddenly I was working in an ancient building, a warehouse facing the Giudecca. The loft over the firehouse was transformed. It was filled with light reflected from the canal. [quote in 1955]”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Guston's quote; as cited in 'Ferguson', 1999, p. 18
1950 - 1960

Way , Quotes , Light

“… acting on Hacker's wishes, the editor of his collected works excluded the author's polemical Christian writings from the compilation…. Many such polemical writings also appeared in fringe religious pamphlets and propaganda literature which are unknown to most scholars…. Hacker's suppression of this material compromised his integrity as an objective scholar, as it misled readers into thinking his writings on Hinduism were objective evaluations when in fact they were, in Andrew Nicholson's words, the work of a 'Christian polemicist'. In his posthumously published wrigings, Hacker is as explicit in his support for Christianity as he is in his attack on contemporary Hinduism.”

Rajiv Malhotra book Indra's Net

Indra's Net (2014)

Literature , Support , Thinking , Appearance

“Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art... He declared that he wanted to kill art ('for myself') but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object."”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Jasper John's quote, from: Marcel Duchamps 1887 – 1968, in 'Artforum' 7 no. 3, November 1968, p. 6
1960s

Art , Thinking , Change

“The state in commissioning its judges has commanded them to judge, but neither in constitution nor in statute has it formulated a code to define the manner of their judging. The pressure of society invests new forms of conduct in the minds of the multitude with the sanction of moral obligation, and the same pressure working upon the mind of the judge invests them finally through his action with the sanction of the law.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

p, 125
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)

Law

“Lir chiseled at the stone. It would take a month to make a perceptible impression on it. He had a few hours. Work harder, then.”

Tanith Lee book The Castle of Dark

Source: The Castle of Dark (1978), Chapter 14 “Lir: The Night-Beast” (p. 119)

“Well, if I were thus rationed in this article and could have but one adjective for George Gershwin, that adjective would be "ingenuous." Ingenuous at and about his piano. Once an occasional composer named Oscar Levant stood beside that piano while those sure, sinewy, catlike Gershwin fingers beat their brilliant drum-fire—the tumultuous cascade of the "Rhapsody In Blue," the amorous languor of "The Man I Love," the impish glee of "Fascinating Rhythm," the fine, jaunty, dust-spurning scorn of "Strike Up the Band." If the performer was familiar with the work of any other composer, he gave no evidence of it. Levant (who, by the way, makes a fleeting appearance in the new Dashlell Hammett book, under the guise of Levi Oscant) could be heard mutterIng under his breath, "An evening with Gershwin Is a Gershwln evening."
"I wonder," said our young composer dreamily, "if my music will be played a hundred years from now."
"It certainly will be," said the bitter Levant,"if you are still around."”

Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) American critic

"George the Ingenuous" in Cosmopolitan (November 1933); reprinted in Ch. IV: "'...A Young Colossus...'" https://books.google.com/books?id=ATcjgQTx0uIC&pg=PA45#v=onepage&q&f=false from Gershwin Remembered (1992) by Edward Jablonski, pp. 44-45

Love , Books , Music , Way

“Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 52

Knowledge , Science , Success

“Because of their historical theory of the “alienation of labor” (that the worker must become less and less in control of the work of his hands) the Marxist parties never fought for the man-worthy job itself.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 37.

“I began studying the political history of race in America. Having worked in Congress and at the White House, I have some familiarity with the nature of politics and how politicians think. I thought I could use this knowledge to illuminate this one aspect of the race problem in America in ways that might help us better deal with its long, sordid history. What quickly jumped out at me is a fact that seems obvious in retrospect, but which I had never really thought about. Virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat. Before the Civil War, the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. It was based largely in the south and almost all of its leaders were slave owners, including Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, considered by Democrats to be co-founders of their party.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Source: 2000s, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past (2008), p. viv

War , Way , History , Nature

“"Non-fiction", on the other hand, declares itself to be the carrier of fact, an expression of reality, and thus of truth. Why then does most fact-based work have a remarkably short shelf life? The reply might be that additional facts come along. That we are learning all the time. In that case, it was never an expression of reality or truth. And even if the facts are overtaken, the arguments built upon them should not date with such terrifying rapidity. Decade-old serious "non-fiction" often seems arcane, irrelevant. The written style itself seems to become old-fashioned. Two-centuries-old decent "fiction" on the other hand can easily remain fresh.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

On Equilibrium (2001)

Life , Truth , Fashion , Reality

“They [the Beatles] came backstage after one of my lectures, and they said to me: 'Even from an early age we have been seeking a highly spiritual existence. We tried drugs and that didn't work.' They are such practical and intelligent young boys that it took them only two days to find that Transcendental Meditation is the answer.
:Quoted from, Beatles Anthology, by The Beatles, Chronicle Books, 2000, page 261”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Books , Age , Quotes , Intelligence

“Somewhere in the past. organizations were quite simple, and 'doing business' consisted of buying raw material from suppliers, converting into products, and selling it to customers… For the most part owner-entrepreneurs founded such simple business and worked along with members of their families. The family-dominated business still accounts for a large portion of the business start today.”

R. Edward Freeman (1951) American academic

Source: Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, 2007, p. 5

Family , Business , Past , Parting

“Contact with like-minded painters – a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through. Shutting myself away in the country, for instance, would do nothing for me. One depends on one's surroundings. And so the exchange with other artists – and especially the collaboration with Lueg and Polke – matters a lot to me: it is part of the input that I need.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1964; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1960's

Idea , Parting , Dependency , Country

“If you've ever used the crowd-sourced encyclopedia to find information on female writers (especially those from Dr. Wadewitz's area of expertise), it's likely that you've run into her work.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Shrayber, Mark (April 19, 2014). "Saturday Night Social: The Night Belongs to Adrianne Wadewitz" http://jezebel.com/saturday-night-social-the-night-belongs-to-adrianne-wa-1565155694. Jezebel.
About

“As you know, I am not a writer but a Party functionary. But like every Communist I consider myself to have been mobilized by Party propaganda and deem it my duty to participate actively in the work of our press.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Reprints from the Soviet Press (1977), p. 5

“Women, to be very attractive to all sorts of different people, must have great readiness of sympathy. Many have it naturally, and many work hard in acquiring a good imitation of it. In the first case it is against the nature of such persons to be monopolized for more than a very short time; in the second all their trouble would be thrown away if they allowed themselves to be monopolized. Once in their lives, indeed, they will be, and ought to be, and that monopoly lasts, or should last for ever; but instead of destroying in them that which was their great charm, it only deepens and widens it, and the sympathy which was before fitful, and, perhaps, wayward, flows on in a calm and healthy stream, blessing and cheering all who come within reach of its exhilarating and life-giving waters.”

Thomas Hughes book Tom Brown at Oxford

Source: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Ch. 27

Life , Women , People , Nature

“What it talks about is stuff that I've gone through, like, in the past year, which is, you know, a lot, and some of it's good, and some of it's bad, and a lot of it's, like, a big learning experience. And I got to write a lot about that with people that I've worked with before, so I felt completely comfortable.”

Hilary Duff (1987) American actress and singer

"Hilary Duff Says New Album Is More Personal" http://launch.yahoo.com/read/story/12065060. Yahoo! Music. September 27 2004. Retrieved October 25 2006.
On the album Hilary Duff (2004).

People , Learning , Past

“So if I say you that your paintings [which his brother-in-law recently made] have nothing in common with what we see generally classified and accepted, and that you have always managed to produce things that were entirely your own work, as I truly see it, that does not mean you have the right to be seated next to Leonardo -
What's more, this originality is suicidal as it distances you from a 'clientele' used to 'copies of copiers', often referred to as 'tradition'-
One more thing, your technique is not the 'expected' technique – It's your own personal technique, borrowed from nobody – and there again, this doesn't attract the clientele.... In a word, do less self-analysis and enjoy your work without worrying about opinions, your own as well as that of others.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from Duchamp's letter to Jean Crotti (Duchamp's brother-in-law) and his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York 17 Augustus 1952; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 167-168
1951 - 1968

Law , Suicide , Painting , Personality

“I must warn you that Gurdjieff is far more of an enigma than you can imagine. I am certain that he is deeply good, and that he is working for the good of mankind. But his methods are often incomprehensible. For example, he uses disgusting language, especially to ladies who are likely to be squeamish about such things. He has the reputation of behaving shamelessly over money matters, and with women also. At his table we have to drink spirits, often to the point of drunkenness. People have said that he is a magician, and that he uses his powers for his own ends… I do not believe that the scandalous tales told of Gurdjieff are true: but you must take into account that they may be true and act accordingly.”

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

John G. Bennett (1974) Witness: The Autobiography of John G. Bennett. Tucson: Omen Press, p. 244. Cited in: " Controversial reputation http://gurdjiefffourthway.org/pdf/negative.pdf" on gurdjiefffourthway.org, accessed 2013-04-21

Women , Money , People , Imagination

“In the early days of the computer revolution computer designers and numerical analysts worked closely together and indeed were often the same people. Now there is a regrettable tendency for numerical analysts to opt out of any responsibility for the design of the arithmetic facilities and a failure to influence the more basic features of software. It is often said that the use of computers for scientific work represents a small part of the market and numerical analysts have resigned themselves to accepting facilities "designed" for other purposes and making the best of them. […] One of the main virtues of an electronic computer from the point of view of the numerical analyst is its ability to "do arithmetic fast."”

James H. Wilkinson (1919–1986) English mathematician

Need the arithmetic be so bad!
Some Comments from a Numerical Analyst (1971)

People , Failure , Parting