Quotes about year
page 59

Bill Clinton photo

“A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”

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

Remarks allegedly made about Barack Obama to Ted Kennedy in 2008, as quoted in Game Change : Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (2010) in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
Attributed

George Washington Plunkitt photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo

“There once was a brainy baboon,
Who always breathed down a bassoon,
For he said, "It appears
That in billions of years
I shall certainly hit on a tune."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

New Pathways in Science (1935) Ch. IV The End of the World, p. 62

Hillary Clinton photo

“The truth is, through all these years of public service, the “service” part has always come easier to me than the “public” part.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Agatha Christie photo
Ken Ham photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo

“It is beyond doubt that the happiness which love can bestow on its chosen souls is the highest that can fall to mortal's lot. But when I imagine myself in the place of the man who, after twenty happy years, now in one moment loses his all, I am moved almost to say that he is the wretchedest of mortals, and that it is better never to have known such happy days. So it is on this miserable earth: 'the purest joy finds its grave in the abyss of time.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

What are we without the hope of a better future?
As quoted in Kneller, Karl Alois, Kettle, Thomas Michael, 1911. "Christianity and the leaders of modern science; a contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century" https://archive.org/stream/christianitylead00kneluoft#page/44/mode/2up, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 44-45

Ron Paul photo

“They use [the term Isolationist] all the time, and they do that to be very negative. There are a few people in the country who say, "Well, that's good. I sort of like that term." I don't particularly like the term because I do not think I am an isolationist at all. Because along with the advice of not getting involved in entangling alliances and into the internal affairs of other countries, the Founders said – and it's permissible under the Constitution – to be friends with people, trade with people, communicate with them, and get along with them – but stay out of the military alliances. The irony is they accuse us, who would like to be less interventionist and keep our troops at home, of being isolationist. Yet if you look at the results of the policy of the last six years, we find that we are more isolated than ever before. So I claim the policy of those who charge us with being isolationists is really diplomatic isolationism. They are not willing to talk to Syria. They are not willing to talk to Iran. They are not willing to trade with people that might have questionable people in charge. We have literally isolated ourselves. We have less friends and more enemies than ever before. So in a way, it's one of the unintended consequences of their charges. They are the true isolationists, I believe.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Scott Horton, April 4, 2007 http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=10798
2000s, 2006-2009

Gloria Estefan photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Mika Waltari photo
Thomas Friedman photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Saint Patrick photo
M. S. Golwalkar photo
Alan Charles Kors photo

“The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one's breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry "caste." In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either "poverty" or "consumerism." In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry "alienation." In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry "oppression." In a society of boundless private charity, they cry "avarice." In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the "exploitation" of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry "injustice." In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like "liberty" in quotation marks when these refer to the West.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Paul Wolfowitz photo
Nicholas Negroponte photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Ken Livingstone photo
Kent Hovind photo

“If the evolutionist is going to say that we have 140 million years since the time of the dinosaurs, that is enough time for the earth to erode away ten times.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Fritjof Capra photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Albert Speer photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo

“Having been connected with industry during my entire life, it seems eminently proper that I should turn back, in part, the proceeds of that activity with the hope of promoting a broader as well as a better understanding of the economic principles and national policies which have characterized American enterprise down through the years.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan (1936); Cited in: " OBITUARY : Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Dead at 90; G.M. Leader and Philanthropist http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0523.html," the New York Times, February 18, 1966. This article comments:
Toward the end of the year [1936] Mr. Sloan made a substantial foray into philanthropy by endowing the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with $10-million.

Bruno Schulz photo
George Raymond Richard Martin photo
Jim Yong Kim photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Harold Wilson photo
Brett Kavanaugh photo

“People sometimes ask what prior legal experience has been most useful for me as a judge. And I say, “I certainly draw on all of them,” but I also say that my five-and-a-half years at the White House and especially my three years as staff secretary for President George W. Bush were the most interesting and informative for me.”

Brett Kavanaugh (1965) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

One Government, Three Branches, Five Controversies: Separation of Powers Under Presidents Bush and Obama, Brett M., Kavanaugh, Marquette Lawyer, Fall 2016 https://law.marquette.edu/assets/marquette-lawyers/pdf/marquette-lawyer/2016-fall/2016-fall-p08.pdf,

Terence McKenna photo
Josh Billings photo
Brian Leiter photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Rob Enderle photo

“This will be a difficult year for Apple, and the iPhone could be more of a drag on earnings than a help. … Apple is clearly not going away — but this year, compared to last, will be really nasty for the company.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

2007: Apple's Bad Year, Vista Launch Countdown, CES Cool Stuff http://technewsworld.com/story/55271.html in Tech News World (22 January 2007)

“Back in my 20s, I was playing poker to avoid living. I wasn’t very satisfied with life. I used to play in a big game in Archway. And we’d play as much as we possibly could and for as much money as we had, and that went on for a couple of years.”

Patrick Marber (1964) English comedian, actor and screenwriter

Interview in Jewish Chronicle, 26 September 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId55759&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrpatrick%20marber&srchtxt1&srchhead1&srchauthor1&srchsandp1&scsrch0

Howard Dean photo

“The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. I mean, they're a pretty monolithic party. They pretty much, they all behave the same, they all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party. Again, the Democrats abduct everybody you can think of. So, as this gentleman was talking about, it's a coalition, a lot of it independent. The problem is, we gotta make sure that turns into a party, which means this: I've gotta spend time in the communities, and our folks gotta spend time in the communities. I think, we're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things, particularly on jobs, and housing, and business opportunities and college opportunities, and so fourth. I think, there has been a lot of progress in the last 20-40 years, but the stakes keep changing. I think there's a lot of folks who vote, maybe right now, in the Asian-American communities, who don't wanna vote Democrats, but they're angry with the President on his immigration policy, the Patriot Act. But, what we need to do while this is going on, is develop a really close relationship with the Asian-American community, so later on there's gonna be a benefit, you know, more equal division. There'll be some party loyalty, as people would rememeber that we were there when it really made a difference. That's really what I'm trying to do. If I come in here 8 weeks before the elections, we're not getting anywhere. Asking if you would vote, you're still mad at the lesser of two evils. So that's why I'm here 3.5 years before the elections. We want different kind of people to run for office, too. We want a very diverse group of people running for office, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos. I think Villaraigosa's election in Los Angeles is incredibly important for the Democratic Party. Bush can go out and talk all he wants about "this is the party of opportunity", you know, he can make his appointments, Condi Rice, or, what's this guy's name, Commerce Secretary, Gutierrez. But you can't succeed electorally if you're a person of color in then Republican Party, there're very few people who have succeeded. You can pick some out, JC Watts, I'm trying to think of an Asian-American who's been a success who's a Republican, I can't think of one off the top of my head. You know, there's always a few, but not many. Because this is the party of opportunity for people of color, and for communities of color. And we're hoping to cement that relationship so that'll always be that way. [Q: You've been very tough on the Republicans, some Democrats criticized you over the weeked for doing that, Joe Biden…] I just got off the phone with John Edwards. What happened was, John Edwards was, in a sense, set up by the reporter, "well you know, Governor Dean said this". Well what I said was, the Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people. That's essentially the gist of the quote, and, you know, the RNC put out a press release. I don't think there's a lot of difference between me and John Edwards right now, I haven't spoken to Senator Biden, but I'm sure that I will. Today, it's all over the wires that Durbin and Sheila Jackson Lee and all of these folks are coming to my defense. Look, we have to be tough on the Republicans; the Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans, and they don't have any understanding of what it is to have to go out and try to make ends meet. You know, the context of what I was talking about was these long lines that you have to wait in to vote. How could you design a system that sometimes causes people to vote, to stand in line for 6 or 8 hours, if you had any understanding what their lives are like: they gotta pick up the kids, they gotta work, sometimes they have two jobs. So that was the context of the remarks. [crosstalk/laughter] This is one of those flaps that comes up once in awhile when I get tough, but I think we all wanna be tougher on the Republicans.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Source: Discussion with reporters Portia Li and Carla Marinucci, in San Francisco http://web.archive.org/web/20060427191647/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/07/MNdean07.TMP&o=1, June 6, 2005

Joe the Plumber photo

“I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan's going to tax me more, isn't it?”

Joe the Plumber (1973) American conservative activist and commentator

A question presented to US Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama as he campaigned in Wurzelbacher's neighborhood. (12 October 2008) Obama responded in part:
My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off [...] if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody. - (Full, unedited video of the conversation between Wurzelbacher and Obama) http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a4_1224166209
This response became a major focus of the presidential campaign of John McCain during the third and final presidential debates between him and Obama, on 15 October 2008, and in later campaign ads which compared Obama's comments on his tax plan to an embrace of socialism.

Cesar Chavez photo
Jim Yong Kim photo

“He was as young as twenty years allowed, and as old as it could make him.”

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 5 (p. 815)

“Ah! Postumus! Devotion fails
The lapse of gliding years to stay,
With wrinkled age it nought avails
Nor conjures conquering Death away.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book II, ode xiv
Translations, The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace (1863)

Sam Walter Foss photo

“A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead;
They followed still his crooked way
And lost a hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.”

Sam Walter Foss (1858–1911) American writer

The Calf-Path http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Calf_Path, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

John F. Kennedy photo
Tony Blair photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.”

James Reston (1909–1995) Journalist, newspaper editor

International Herald Tribune (18 November 1991)

Leo Tolstoy photo
Lewis Pugh photo
Dennis Skinner photo
John D. Carmack photo

“The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

On software patents, Quoted in "John Carmack: Knee Deep in the Voodoo" http://web.archive.org/web/20010624154450/http://www.voodooextreme.com/games/interviews/carmack/ Voodoo Extreme(2000-11-11)

Ehud Olmert photo
Heinrich Rohrer photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Nicole Krauss photo
Alex Salmond photo
Adrian Slywotzky photo
Yoshida Shoin photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Václav Havel photo

“We are finding out that what looked like a neglected house a year ago is in fact a ruin.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Statement about the conditions in Czechoslovakia and other previously Soviet Bloc countries. Daily Telegraph London (3 January 1991)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) - how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company? If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don't speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language in Malaysia). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if doesn't happen, what happens then? Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indian and others opposing Malay rights. They don't oppose Malay rights. They, the Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn't it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their problem has been resolved.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645
1960s

Theodor Mommsen photo

“When Sulla died in the year [78 B. C. ], the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. it was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs…There were… the numerous and important classes whom the sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whom the political or private interest it had directly injured. Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in [89 B. C. ] as merely an installment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also the freedman, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among the burgess bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations - whether they, like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arrentines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory, but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people..”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

William Collins photo

“In yonder Grave a Druid lies
Where slowly winds the Stealing Wave!
The Year's best Sweets shall duteous rise
To deck its Poet's sylvan Grave!”

William Collins (1721–1759) English poet, born 1721

Source: Ode Occasioned by the Death of Mr. Thomson, (1748) http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/collins/thomson.php, line 1.

Khaled Hosseini photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Paul Wolfowitz photo

“I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years.”

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

House subcommittee on Iraq testimony (February 28, 2003).

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce photo
Walter Dill Scott photo

“I see not a step before me as I tread on another year;
But I ’ve left the Past in God’s keeping,—the Future
His mercy shall clear;
And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near.”

Mary Gardiner Brainard (1837–1905) American poet

Not knowing, published in The Congregationalist, March 1869, and set to music as a hymn by Philip Paul Bliss in the 1870s. Thomas Corts, Glimpses of Christian History Presents More Stories: Blessed Bliss http://chi.gospelcom.net/lives_events/more/bliss.shtml, 2007.

Kent Hovind photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Saddam Hussein photo

“Hussein stated it is not only important what people say or think about him now but what they think in the future, 500 or 1000 years from now. The most important thing, however, is what God thinks. If God believes something, He will convince the people to agree. If God does not agree, it does not matter what the people think.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Interview by FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm.
Attributed

Kóbó Abe photo
Francis Thompson photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Roger Ebert photo
Jussi Halla-aho photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Omarosa photo
John McCain photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
John McCain photo
Siobhan Fahey photo

“It's time that glamour came back, everything has got a little bit beige in the last two years, I say bring back black!”

Siobhan Fahey (1958) singer and songwriter in Banarama and Shakespears Sister

G3 interview (2002)

David Rakoff photo